Chapter One:  Golden Boy


SHE came out of the store just in time to see her young son playing on the sidewalk directly in the path of the gray, gaunt man who strode down the center of the walk like a mechanical derelict. For an instant, her heart quailed. Then she jumped forward, gripped her son by the arm, snatched him out of harm's way.
The man went by without turning his head. As his back moved away from her, she hissed at it, "Go away! Get out of here! You ought to be ashamed!"
Thomas Covenant's stride went on, as unfaltering as clockwork that had been wound to the hilt for just this purpose. But to himself he responded, Ashamed? Ashamed? His face contorted in a wild grimace. Beware! Outcast unclean!
But he saw that the people he passed, the people who knew him, whose names and houses and handclasps were known to him-he saw that they stepped aside, gave him plenty of room. Some of them looked as if they were holding their breath. His inner shouting collapsed. These people did not need the ancient ritual of warning. He concentrated on restraining the spasmodic snarl which lurched across his face, and let the tight machinery of his will carry him forward step by step.
As he walked, he flicked his eyes up and down himself, verifying that there were no unexpected tears or snags in his clothing, checking his hands for scratches, making sure that nothing had happened to the scar which stretched from the heel of his right palm across where his last two fingers had been. He could hear the doctors saying, "VSE, Mr. Covenant. Visual Surveillance of Extremities. Your health depends upon it. Those dead nerves will never grow back-you'll never know when you've hurt yourself unless you get in the habit of checking. Do it all the time-think about it all the time. The next time you might not be so lucky."
VSE. Those initials comprised his entire life.
Doctors! he thought mordantly. But without them, he might not have survived even this long. He had been so ignorant of his danger. Self-neglect might have killed him.
Watching the startled, frightened or oblivious faces -there were many oblivious faces, though the town was small-that passed around him, he wished he could be sure that his face bore a proper expression of disdain. But the nerves in his cheeks seemed only vaguely alive, though the doctors had assured him that this was an illusion at the present stage of his illness, and he could never trust the front which he placed between himself and the world. Now, as women who had at one time chosen to discuss his novel in their literary clubs recoiled from him as if he were some kind of minor horror or ghoul, he felt a sudden treacherous pang of loss. He strangled it harshly, before it could shake his balance.
He was nearing his destination, the goal of the affirmation or proclamation that he had so grimly undertaken. He could see the sign two blocks ahead of him: Bell Telephone Company. He was walking the two miles into town from Haven Farm in order to pay his phone bill. Of course, he could have mailed in the money, but he had learned to see that act as a surrender, an abdication to the mounting bereavement which was being practiced against him.
While he had been in treatment, his wife, Joan, had divorced him-taken their infant son and moved out of the state. The only thing in which he, Thomas Covenant, had a stake that she had dared handle had been the car; she had taken it as well. Most of her clothing she had left behind. Then his nearest neighbors, half a mile away on either side, had complained shrilly about his presence among them; and when he had refused to sell his property, one of them moved from the county. Next, within three weeks of his return home, the grocery store-he was walking past it now, its windows full of frenetic advertisements had begun delivering his supplies, whether or not he ordered them-and, he suspected, whether or not he was willing to pay.
Now he strode past the courthouse, its old gray columns looking proud of their burden of justice and law-the building in which, by proxy, of course, he had been reft of his family. Even its front steps were polished to guard against the stain of human need which prowled up and down them, seeking restitution. The divorce had been granted because no compassionate law could force a woman to raise her child in the company of a man like him. Were there tears? he asked Joan's memory. Were you brave? Relieved? Covenant resisted an urge to run out of danger. The gaping giant heads which topped the courthouse columns looked oddly nauseated, as if they were about to vomit on him.
In a town of no more than five thousand, the business section was not large. Covenant crossed in front of the department store, and through the glass front he could see several high-school girls pricing cheap jewelry. They leaned on the counters in provocative poses, and Covenant's throat tightened involuntarily. He found himself resenting the hips and breasts of the girls-curves for other men's caresses, not his. He was impotent. In the decay of his nerves, his sexual capacity was just another amputated member. Even the release of lust was denied to him; he could conjure up desires until insanity threatened, but he could do nothing about them. Without warning, a memory of his wife flared in his mind, almost blanking out the sunshine and the sidewalk and the people in front of him. He saw her in one of the opaque nightgowns he had bought for her, her breasts tracing circles of invitation under the thin fabric. His heart cried, Joan!
How could you do it? Is one sick body more important than everything?
Bracing his shoulders like a strangler, he suppressed the memory. Such thoughts were a weakness he could not afford; he had to stamp them out. Better to be bitter, he thought. Bitterness survives. It seemed to be the only savor he was still able to taste.
To his dismay, he discovered that he had stopped moving. He was standing in the middle of the sidewalk with his fists clenched and his shoulders trembling. Roughly, he forced himself into motion again. As he did so, he collided with someone.
Outcast unclean!
He caught a glimpse of ocher; the person he had bumped seemed to be wearing a dirty, reddish-brown robe. But he did not stop to apologize. He stalked on down the walk so that he would not have to face that particular individual's fear and loathing. After a moment, his stride recovered its empty, mechanical tick.
Now he was passing the offices of the Electric Company-his last reason for coming to pay his phone bill in person. Two months ago, he had mailed in a check to the Electric Company-the amount was small; he had little use for power-and it had been returned to him. In fact, his envelope had not even been opened. An attached note had explained that his bill had been anonymously paid for at least a year.
After a private struggle, he had realized that if he did not resist this trend, he would soon have no reason at all to go among his fellow human beings. So today he was walking the two miles into town to pay his phone bill in person-to show his peers that he did not intend to be shriven of his humanity. In rage at his outcasting, he sought to defy it, to assert the rights of his common mortal blood.
In person, he thought. What if he were too late? If the bill had already been paid? What did he come in person for then?
The thought caught his heart in a clench of trepidation. He clicked rapidly through his VSE, then returned his gaze to the hanging sign of the Bell Telephone Company, half a block away. As he moved forward, conscious of a pressure to surge against his anxiety, he noticed a tune running in his mind along the beat of his stride. Then he recollected the words:

Golden boy with feet of clay,
Let me help you on your way.
A proper push will take you far
But what a clumsy lad you are!

The doggerel chuckled satirically through his thoughts, and its crude rhythm thumped against him like an insult, accompanied by slow stripper's music. He wondered if there were an overweight goddess somewhere in the mystical heavens of the universe, grinding out his burlesque fate: A proper push leer will take you far-but what a clumsy lad you are! mock pained dismay. Oh, right, golden boy.
But he could not sneer his way out of that thought, because at one time he had been a kind of golden boy. He had been happily married. He had had a son. He had written a novel in ecstasy and ignorance, and had watched it spend a year on the best-seller lists. And because of it, he now had all the money he needed.
I would be better off, he thought, if I'd known I was writing that kind of book.
But he had not known. He had not even believed that he would find a publisher, back in the days when he had been writing that book-the days right after he' had married Joan. Together, they did not think about money or success. It was the pure act of creation which ignited his imagination; and the warm spell of her pride and eagerness kept him burning like a bolt of lightning, not for seconds or fractions of seconds, but for five months in one long wild discharge of energy that seemed to create the landscapes of the earth out of nothingness by the sheer force of its brilliance-hills and crags, trees bent by the passionate wind, night-ridden people, all rendered into being by that white bolt striking into the heavens from the lightning rod of his writing. When he was done,
he felt as drained and satisfied as all of life's love uttered in one act.
That had not been an easy time. There was an anguish in the perception of heights and abysses that gave each word he wrote the shape of dried, black blood. And he was not a man who liked heights; unconstricted emotion did not come easily to him. But it had been glorious. The focusing to that pitch of intensity had struck him as the cleanest thing that had ever happened to him. The stately frigate of his soul had sailed well over a deep and dangerous ocean. When he mailed his manuscript away, he did so with a kind of calm confidence.
During those months of writing and then of waiting, they lived on her income. She, Joan Macht Covenant, was a quiet woman who expressed more of herself with her eyes and the tone of her skin than she did with words. Her flesh had a hue of gold which made her look as warm and precious as a sylph or succuba of joy. But she was not large or strong, and Thomas Covenant felt constantly amazed at the fact that she earned a living for them by breaking horses.
The term breaking, however, did not do justice to her skill with animals. There were no tests of strength in her work, no bucking stallions with mad eyes and foaming nostrils. It seemed to Covenant that she did not break horses; she seduced them. Her touch spread calm over their twitching muscles. Her murmuring voice relaxed the tension in the angle of their ears. When she mounted them bareback, the grip of her legs made the violence of their brute fear fade. And whenever a horse burst from her control, she simply slid from its back and left it alone until the spasm of its wildness had worn away. Then she began with the animal again. In the end, she took it on a furious gallop around Haven Farm, to show the horse that it could exert itself to the limit without surpassing her mastery.
Watching her, Covenant had felt daunted by her ability. Even after she taught him to ride, he could not overcome his fear of horses.
Her work was not lucrative, but it kept her and her husband from going hungry until the day a letter of acceptance arrived from the publisher. On that day, Joan decided that the time had come to have a child.
Because of the usual delays of publication, they had to live for nearly a year on an advance on Covenant's royalties. Joan kept her job in one way or another for as long as she could without threatening the safety of the child conceived in her. Then, when her body told her that the time had come, she quit working. At that point, her life turned inward, concentrated on the task of growing her baby with a single-mindedness that often left her outward eyes blank and tinged with expectation.
After he was born, Joan announced that the boy was to be named Roger, after her father and her father's father.
Roger! Covenant groaned as he neared the door of the phone company's offices. He had never even liked that name. But his son's infant face, so meticulously and beautifully formed, human and complete, had made his heart ache with love and pride-yes, pride, a father's participation in mystery. And now his son was gone-gone with Joan he did not know where. Why was he so unable to weep?
The next instant, a hand plucked at his sleeve. "Hey, mister," a thin voice said fearfully, urgently. "Hey, mister." He turned with a yell in his throat -Don't touch me! Outcast unclean!- but the face of the boy who clutched his arm stopped him, kept him from pulling free. The boy was young, not more than eight or nine years old-surely he was too young to be so afraid? His face was mottled pale-and-livid with dread and coercion, as if he were somehow being forced to do something which terrified him.
"Hey, mister," he said, thinly supplicating. "Here. Take it." He thrust an old sheet of paper into Covenant's numb fingers. "He told me to give it to you. You're supposed to read it. Please, mister?"
Covenant's fingers closed involuntarily around the paper. He? he thought dumbly, staring at the boy. He?
"Him." The boy pointed a shaking finger back up the sidewalk.
Covenant looked, and saw an old man in a dirty ocher robe standing half a block away. He was mumbling, almost singing a dim nonsense tune; and his mouth hung open, though his lips and jaw did not move to shape his mutterings. His long, tattered hair and beard fluttered around his head in the light breeze. His face was lifted to the sky; he seemed to be staring directly at the sun. In his left hand he held a wooden beggar-bowl. His right hand clutched a long wooden staff, to the top of which was affixed a sign bearing one word: "Beware."
Beware?
For an odd moment, the sign itself seemed to exert a peril over Covenant. Dangers crowded through it to get at him, terrible dangers swam in the air toward him, screaming like vultures. And among them, looking toward him through the screams, there were eyes-two eyes like fangs, carious and deadly. They regarded him with a fixed, cold and hungry malice, focused on him as if he and he alone were the carrion they craved. Malevolence dripped from them like venom. For that moment, he quavered in the grasp of an inexplicable fear.
Beware!
But it was only a sign, only a blind placard attached to a wooden staff. Covenant shuddered, and the sir in front of him cleared.
"You're supposed to read it," the boy said again.
"Don't touch me," Covenant murmured to the grip on his arm. "I'm a leper."
But when he looked around, the boy was gone.

Two: "You Cannot Hope"


IN his confusion, he scanned the street rapidly, but the boy had escaped completely. Then, as he turned back toward the old beggar, his eyes caught the door, gilt-lettered: Bell Telephone Company. The sight gave him a sudden twist of fear that made him forget all distractions. Suppose- This was his destination; he had come here in person to claim his human right to pay his own bills. But suppose-
He shook himself. He was a leper; he could not afford suppositions. Unconsciously, he shoved the sheet of paper into his pocket. With grim deliberateness, he gave himself a VSE. Then he gripped himself, and started toward the door.
A man hurrying out through the doorway almost bumped into him, then recognized him and backed away, his face suddenly gray with apprehension. The jolt broke Covenant's momentum, and he almost shouted aloud, Leper outcast unclean! He stopped again, allowed himself a moment's pause. The man had been Joan's lawyer at the divorce-a short, fleshy individual full of the kind of bonhomie in which lawyers and ministers specialize., Covenant needed that pause to recover from the dismay of the lawyer's glance. He felt involuntarily ashamed to be the cause of such dismay. For a moment, he could not recollect the conviction which had brought him into town.
But almost at once he began to fume silently. Shame and rage were inextricably bound together in him. I'm not going to let them do this to me, he rasped. By hell! They have no right. Yet he could not so
easily eradicate the lawyer's expression from his thoughts. That revulsion was an accomplished fact, like leprosy-immune to any question of right or justice. And above all else a leper must not forget the lethal reality of facts.
As Covenant paused, he thought, I should write a poem.
These are the pale deaths which men miscall their lives: for all the scents of green things growing, each breath is but an exhalation of the grave. Bodies jerk like puppet corpses, and hell walks laughing-
Laughing-now there's a real insight. Hellfire.
Did I do a whole life's laughing in that little time?
He felt that he was asking an important question. He had laughed when his novel had been accepted -laughed at the shadows of deep and silent thoughts that had shifted like sea currents in Roger's face laughed over the finished product of his book laughed at its presence on the best-seller lists. Thousands of things large and small had filled him with glee. When Joan had asked him what he found so funny, he was only able to reply that every breath charged him with ideas for his next book. His lungs bristled with imagination and energy. He chuckled whenever he had more joy than he could contain.
But Roger had been six months old when the novel had become famous, and six months later Covenant still had somehow not begun writing again. He had too many ideas. He could not seem to choose among them.
Joan had not approved of this unproductive luxuriance. She had packed up Roger, and had left her husband in their newly purchased house, with his office newly settled in a tiny, two-room but overlooking a stream in the woods that filled the back of Haven Farm-left him with strict orders to start writing while she took Roger to meet his relatives.
That had been the pivot, the moment in which the rock had begun rolling toward his feet of clay-begun with rumbled warnings the stroke which had cut him off as severely as a surgeon attacking gangrene. He had heard the warnings, and had ignored them. He had not known what they meant.
No, rather than looking for the cause of that low thunder, he had waved good-bye to Joan with regret and quiet respect. He had seen that she was right, that he would not start to work again unless he were alone for a time; and he had admired her ability to act even while his heart ached under the awkward burden of their separation. So when he had waved her plane away over his horizons, he returned to Haven Farm, locked himself in his office, turned on the power to his electric typewriter, and wrote the dedication of his next novel:
"For Joan, who has been my keeper of the possible."
His fingers slipped uncertainly on the keys, and he needed three tries to produce a perfect copy. But he was not sea-wise enough to see the coming storm.
The slow ache in his wrists and ankles he also ignored; he only stamped his feet against the ice that seemed to be growing in them. And when he found the numb purple spot on his right hand near the base of his little finger, he put it out of his mind. Within twenty-four hours of Joan's departure, he was deep into the plotting of his book. Images cascaded through his imagination. His fingers fumbled, tangled themselves around the simplest words, but his imagination was sure. He had no thought to spare for the suppuration of the small wound which grew in the center of that purple stain.
Joan brought Roger home after three weeks of family visits. She did not notice anything wrong until that evening, when Roger was asleep, and she sat in her husband's arms. The storm windows were up, and the house was closed against the chill winter wind which prowled the Farm. In the still air of their living room, she caught the faint, sweet, sick smell of Covenant's infection.
Months later, when he stared at the antiseptic walls of his room in the leprosarium, he cursed himself for not putting iodine on his hand. It was not the loss of two fingers that galled him. The surgery which amputated part of his hand was only a small symbol of the stroke which cut him out of his life, excised him from his own world as if he were some kind of malignant infestation. And when his right hand ached with the memory of its lost members, that pain was no more than it should be. No, he berated his carelessness because it had cheated him of one last embrace with Joan.
But with her in his arms on that last winter night, he had been ignorant of such possibilities. Talking softly about his new book, he held her close, satisfied for that moment with the press of her firm flesh against his, with the clean smell of her hair and the glow of her warmth. Her sudden reaction had startled him. Before he was sure what disturbed her, she was standing, pulling him up off the sofa after her. She held his right hand up between them, exposed his infection, and her voice crackled with anger and concern.
"Oh, Tom! Why don't you take care of yourself?"
After that, she did not hesitate. She asked one of the neighbors to sit with Roger, then drove her husband through the light February snow to the emergency room of the hospital. She did not leave him until he had been admitted to a room and scheduled for surgery.
The preliminary diagnosis was gangrene.
Joan spent most of the next day with him at the hospital, during the time when he was not being given tests. And the next morning, at six o'clock, Thomas Covenant was taken from his room for surgery on his right hand. He regained consciousness three hours later back in his hospital bed, with two fingers gone. The grogginess of the drugs clouded him for a time, and he did not miss Joan until noon.
But she did not come to see him at all that day. And when she arrived in his room the following morning, she was changed. Her skin was pale, as if her heart were hoarding blood, and the bones of her forehead seemed to press against the flesh. She had the look of a trapped animal. She ignored his outstretched hand. Her voice was low, constrained; she had to exert force to make even that much of herself reach toward him. Standing as far away as she could in the room, staring emptily out the window at the slushy streets, she told him the news.
The doctors had discovered that he had leprosy.
His mind blank with surprise, he said, "You're kidding."
Then she spun and faced him, crying, "Don't play stupid with me now! The doctor said he would tell you, but I told him no, I would do it. I was thinking of you. But I can't-I can't stand it. You've got leprosy! Don't you know what that means? Your hands and feet are going to rot away, and your legs and arms will twist, and your face will turn ugly like a fungus. Your eyes will get ulcers and go bad after a while, and I can't stand it-it won't make any difference to you because you won't be able to feel anything, damn you! And-oh, Tom, Tom! It's catching."
"Catching?" He could not seem to grasp what she meant.
"Yes!" she hissed. "Most people get it because" for a moment she choked on the fear which impelled her outburst "because they were exposed when they were kids. Children are more susceptible than adults. Roger- I can't risk- I've got to protect Roger from that!"
As she ran, escaped from the room, he answered, "Yes, of course." Because he had nothing else to say. He still did not understand. His mind was empty. He did not begin to perceive until weeks later how much of him had been blown out by the wind of Joan's passion. Then he was simply appalled.
Forty-eight hours after his surgery, Covenant's surgeon pronounced him ready to travel, and sent him to the leprosarium in Louisiana. On their drive to the leprosarium, the doctor who met his plane talked flatly about various superficial aspects of leprosy. Mycobacterium leprae was first identified by Armauer Hansen in 1874, but study of the bacillus has been consistently foiled by the failure of the researchers to meet
two of Koch's four steps of analysis: no one had been able to grow the microorganism artificially, and no one had discovered how it is transmitted. However, certain modern research by Dr. O. A. Skinsnes of Hawaii seemed promising. Covenant listened only vaguely. He could hear abstract vibrations of horror in the word leprosy, but they did not carry conviction. They affected him like a threat in a foreign language. Behind the intonation of menace, the words themselves communicated nothing. He watched the doctor's earnest face as if he were staring at Joan's incomprehensible passion, and made no response.
But when Covenant was settled in his room at the leprosarium-a square cell with a white blank bed and antiseptic walls---the doctor took another tack. Abruptly, he said, "Mr. Covenant, you don't seem to understand what's at stake here. Come with me. I want to show you something."
Covenant followed him out into the corridor. As they walked, the doctor said, "You have what we call a primary case of Hansen's disease-a native case, one that doesn't seem to have a-a genealogy. Eighty percent of the cases we get in this country involve people-immigrants and so on-who were exposed to the disease as children in foreign countriestropical climates: At least we know where they contracted it, if not why or how.
"Of course, primary or secondary, they can take the same general path. But as a rule people with secondary cases grew up in places where Hansen's disease is less arcane than here. They recognize what they've got when they get it. That means they have a better chance of seeking help in time.
"I want you to meet another of our patients. He's the only other primary case we have here at present. He used to be a sort of hermit-lived alone away from everyone in the West Virginia mountains. He didn't know what was happening to him until the army tried to get in touch with him-tell him his son was killed in the war. When the officer saw this man, he called in the Public Health Service. They sent the man to us."
The doctor stopped in front of a door like the one to Covenant's cell. He knocked, but did not wait for an answer. He pushed open the door, caught Covenant by the elbow, and steered him into the room.
As he stepped across the threshold, Covenant's nostrils were assaulted by a pungent reek, a smell like that of rotten flesh lying in a latrine. It defied mere carbolic acid and ointments to mask it. It came from a shrunken figure sitting grotesquely on the white bed.
"Good afternoon," the doctor said. "This is Thomas Covenant. He has a primary case of Hansen's disease, and doesn't seem to understand the danger he's in."
Slowly, the patient raised his arms as if to embrace Covenant.
His hands were swollen stumps, fingerless lumps of pink, sick meat marked by cracks and ulcerations from which a yellow exudation oozed through the medication. They hung on thin, hooped arms like awkward sticks. And even though his legs were covered by his hospital pajamas, they looked like gnarled wood. Half of one foot was gone, gnawed away, and in the place of the other was nothing but an unhealable wound.
Then the patient moved his lips to speak, and Covenant looked up at his face. His dull, cataractal eyes sat in his face as if they were the center of an eruption. The skin of his cheeks was as white-pink as an albino's; it bulged and poured away from his eyes in waves, runnulets, as if it had been heated to the melting point; and these waves were edged with thick tubercular nodules.
"Kill yourself," he rasped terribly. "Better than this."
Covenant broke away from the doctor. He rushed out into the hall and the contents of his stomach spattered over the clean walls and floor like a stain of outrage.
In that way, he decided to survive.
Thomas Covenant lived in the leprosarium for more than six months. He spent his time roaming the corridors like an amazed phantasm, practicing his VSE and other survival drills, glaring his way through hours of conferences with the doctors, listening to lectures on leprosy and therapy and rehabilitation. He soon learned that the doctors believed patient psychology to be the key to treating leprosy. They wanted to counsel him. But he refused to talk about himself. Deep within him, a hard core of intransigent fury was growing. He had learned that by some bitter trick of his nerves the two fingers he had lost felt more alive to the rest of his body than did his remaining digits. His right thumb was always reaching for those excised fingers, and finding their scar with an awkward, surprised motion. The help of the doctors seemed to resemble this same trick. Their few sterile images of hope struck him as the gropings of an unfingered imagination. And so the conferences, like the lectures, ended as long speeches by experts on the problems that he, Thomas Covenant, faced.
For weeks the speeches were pounded into him until he began to dream them at night. Admonitions took over the ravaged playground of his mind. Instead of stories and passions, he dreamed perorations.
"Leprosy," he heard night after night, "is perhaps the most inexplicable of all human afflictions. It is a mystery, just as the strange, thin difference between living and inert matter is a mystery. Oh, we know some things about it: it is not fatal; it is not contagious in any conventional way; it operates by destroying the nerves, typically in the extremities and in the cornea of the eye; it produces deformity, largely because it negates the body's ability to protect itself by feeling and reacting against pain; it may result in complete disability, extreme deformation of the face and limbs, and blindness; and it is irreversible, since the nerves that die cannot be restored. We also know that, in almost all cases, proper treatment using DDS -diamino-diphenyl-sulfone-and some of the new synthetic antibiotics can arrest the spread of the disease, and that, once the neural deterioration has been halted, the proper medication and therapy can keep the affliction under control for the rest of the patient's life. What we do not know is why or how any specific person contracts the illness. As far as we can prove, it comes out of nowhere for no reason. And once you get it, you cannot hope for a cure."
The words he dreamed were not exaggerated-they could have come verbatim from any one of a score of lectures or conferences-but their tolling sounded like the tread of something so unbearable that it should never have been uttered. The impersonal voice of the doctor went on: "What we have learned from our years of study is that Hansen's disease creates two unique problems for the patient-interrelated difficulties that do not occur with any other illness, and that make the mental aspect of being a leprosy victim more crucial than the physical.
"The first involves your relationships with your fellow human beings. Unlike leukemia today, or tuberculosis in the last century, leprosy is not, and has never been, a `poetic' disease, a disease which can be romanticized. Just the reverse. Even in societies that hate their sick less than we Americans do, the leper has always been despised and feared-outcast even by his most-loved ones because of a rare bacillus no one can predict or control. Leprosy is not fatal, and the average patient can look forward to as much as thirty or fifty years of life as a leper. That fact, combined with the progressive disability which the disease inflicts, makes leprosy patients, of all sick people, the ones most desperately in need of human support. But virtually all societies condemn their lepers to isolation and despair-denounced as criminals and degenerates, as traitors and villains-cast out of the human race because science has failed to unlock the mystery of this affection. In country after country, culture after culture around the world, the leper has been considered the personification of everything people, privately and communally, fear and abhor.
"People react this way for several reasons. First, the disease produces an ugliness and a bad smell that are undeniably unpleasant. And second, generations of medical research notwithstanding, people fail to believe that something so obvious and -ugly and so mysterious is not contagious. The fact that we cannot answer questions about the bacillus reinforces their fear-we cannot be sure that touch or air or food or water or even compassion do not spread the disease. In the absence of any natural, provable explanation of the illness, people account for it in other ways, all bad-as proof of crime or filth or perversion, evidence of God's judgment, as the horrible sign of some psychological or spiritual or moral corruption or guilt. And they insist it's catching, despite evidence that it is minimally contagious, even to children. So many of you are going to have to live without one single human support to bear the burden with you.
"That is one reason why we place such an emphasis on counseling here; we want to help you learn to cope with loneliness. Many of the patients who leave this institution do not five out their full years. Under the shock of their severance, they lose their motivation; they let their self-treatments slide, and become either actively or passively suicidal; few of them come back here in time. The patients who survive find someone somewhere who is willing to help them want to live. Or they find somewhere inside themselves the strength to endure.
"Whichever way you go, however, one fact will remain constant: from now until you die, leprosy is the biggest single fact of your existence. It will control how you live in every particular. From the moment you awaken until the moment you sleep, you will have to give your undivided attention to all the hard corners and sharp edges of life. You can't take vacations from it. You can't try to rest yourself by daydreaming, lapsing. Anything that bruises, bumps, burns, breaks, scrapes, snags, pokes, or weakens you can maim, cripple, or even kill you. And thinking about all the kinds of life you can't have can drive you to despair and suicide. I've seen it happen."
Covenant's pulse was racing, and his sweat made the sheets cling to his limbs. The voice of his nightmare had not changed-it made no effort to terrify him, took no pleasure in his fear-but now the words were as black as hate, and behind them stretched a great raw wound of emptiness.
"That brings us to the other problem. It sounds simple, but you will find it can be devastating. Most people depend heavily on their sense .of touch. In fact, their whole structure of responses to reality is organized around their touch. They may doubt their eyes and ears, but when they touch something they know it's real. And it is not an accident that we describe the deepest parts of ourselves-our emotionsin terms of the sense of touch. Sad tales touch our feelings. Bad situations irritate us or hurt us. This is an inevitable result of the fact that we are biological organisms.
"You must fight and change this orientation. You're intelligent creatures-each of you has a brain. Use it. Use it to recognize your danger. Use it to train yourself to stay alive."
Then he woke up alone in his bed drenched with sweat, eyes staring, lips taut with .whimpers that tried to plead their way between his clenched teeth. Dream after dream, week after week, the pattern played itself out. Day after day, he had to lash himself with anger to make himself leave the ineffectual sanctuary of his cell.
But his fundamental decision held. He met patients who had been to the leprosarium several times before-haunted recidivists who could not satisfy the essential demand of their torment, the requirement that they cling to life without desiring any of the recompense which gave life value. Their cyclic degeneration taught him to see that his nightmare contained the raw materials for survival. Night after night, it battered him against the brutal and irremediable law of leprosy; blow by blow, it showed him that an entire devotion to that law was his only defense against suppuration and gnawing rot and blindness. In his fifth and sixth months at the leprosarium, he practiced his VSE and other drills with manic diligence. He stared at the blank antiseptic walls of his cell as if to hypnotize himself with them. In the back of his mind, he counted the hours between doses of his medication. And whenever he slipped, missed a beat of his defensive rhythm, he excoriated himself with curses.
In seven months, the doctors were convinced that his diligence was not a passing phase. They were reasonably sure that the progress of his illness had been arrested. They sent him home.
As he returned to his house on Haven Farm in late summer, he thought that he was prepared for everything. He had braced himself for the absence of any communication from Joan, the dismayed revulsions of his former friends and associates-though these assaults still afflicted him with a vertiginous nausea of rage and self-disgust. The sight of Joan's and Roger's belongings in the house, and the desertion of the stables where Joan had formerly kept her horses, stung his sore heart like a corrosive-but he had already set his heels against the pull of such pains.
Yet he was not prepared, not for everything. The next shock surpassed his readiness. After he had double- and triple-checked to be sure he had received no mail from Joan, after he had spoken on the phone with the lawyer who handled his business -he had heard the woman's discomfort throbbing across the metallic connection- he went to his but in the woods and sat down to read what he had written on his new book.
Its blind poverty left him aghast. To call it ridiculously naive would have been a compliment. He could hardly believe that he was responsible for such supercilious trash.
That night, he reread his first novel, the best-seller. Then, moving with extreme caution, he built a fire in his hearth and burned both the novel and the new manuscript. Fire! he thought. Purgation. If I do not write another word, I will at least rid my life of these lies. Imagination! How could I have been so complacent? And as he watched the pages crumble into gray ash, he threw in with them all thought of further writing. For the first time, he understood part of what the doctors had been saying; he needed to crush out his imagination. He could not afford to have an imagination, a faculty which could envision Joan, joy, health. If he tormented himself with unattainable desires, he would cripple his grasp on the law which enabled him to survive. His imagination could kill him, lead or seduce or trick him into suicide: seeing all the things he could not have would make him despair.
When the fire went out, he ground the ashes underfoot as if to make their consummation irrevocable.
The next morning, he set about organizing his life.
First, he found his old straight razor. Its long, stainless-steel blade gleamed like a leer in the fluorescent light of his bathroom; but he stropped it deliberately, lathered his face, braced his timorous bones against the sink, and set the edge to his throat. It felt like a cold line of fire across his jugular, a keen threat of blood and gangrene and reactivated leprosy. If his half-unfingered hand slipped or twitched, the consequences might be extreme. But he took the risk consciously to discipline himself, enforce his recognition of the raw terms of his survival, mortify his recalcitrance. He instituted shaving with that blade as a personal ritual, a daily confrontation with his condition.
For the same reason, he began carrying around a sharp penknife. Whenever he felt his discipline faltering, felt threatened by memories or hopes or love, he took out the knife and tested its edge on his wrist.
Then, after he had shaved, he worked on his house. He neatened it, rearranged the furniture to minimize the danger of protruding corners, hard edges, hidden obstacles; he eliminated everything which could trip, bruise, or deflect him, so that even in the dark his rooms would be navigable, safe; he made his house as much like his cell in the leprosarium as possible. Anything that was hazardous, he threw into the guest room; and when he was done he locked the guest room and threw away the key.
After that he went to his but and locked it also. Then he pulled its fuses, so that there would be no risk of fire in the old wiring.
Finally he washed the sweat off his hands. He washed them grimly, obsessively; he could not help himself -the physical impression of uncleanness was too strong.
Leper outcast unclean.
He spent the autumn stumbling around the rims of madness. Dark violence throbbed in him like a picar thrust between his ribs, goading him aimlessly. He felt an insatiable need for sleep, but could not heed it because his dreams had changed to nightmares of gnawing; despite his numbness, he seemed to feel himself being eaten away. And wakefulness confronted him with a vicious and irreparable paradox. Without the support or encouragement of other people, he did not believe he could endure the burden of his struggle against horror and death; yet that horror and death explained, made comprehensible, almost vindicated the rejection which denied him support or encouragement. His struggle arose from the same passions which produced his outcasting. He hated what would happen to him if he failed to fight. He hated himself for having to fight such a winless and interminable war. But he could not hate the people who made his moral solitude so absolute. They, only shared his own fear.
In the dizzy round of his dilemma, the only response which steadied him was vitriol. He clung to his bitter anger as to an anchor of sanity; he needed fury in order to survive, to keep his grip like a stranglehold on life. Some days he went from sun to sun without any rest from rage.
But in time even that passion began to falter. His outcasting was part of his law; it was an irreducible fact, as totally real and compulsory as gravity and pestilence and numbness. If he failed to crush himself to fit the mold of his facts, he would fail to survive.
When he looked out over the Farm, the trees which edged his property along the highway seemed so far away that nothing could bridge the gap.
The contradiction had no answer. It made his fingers twitch helplessly, so that he almost cut himself shaving. Without passion he could not fight-yet all his passions rebounded against him. As the autumn passed, he cast fewer and fewer curses at the impossibilities imprisoning him. He prowled through the woods behind Haven Farm-a tall, lean man a with haggard eyes, a mechanical stride, and two fingers gone from his right hand. Every cluttered trail, sharp rock, steep slope reminded him that he was keeping himself alive with caution, that he had only to let his surveillance slip to go quietly unmourned and painless out of his troubles.
It gave him nothing but an addition of sorrow to
touch the bark of a tree and feel nothing. He saw clearly the end that waited for him; his heart would become as affectless as his body, and then he would be lost for good and all.
Nevertheless, he was filled with a sudden sense of focus, of crystallization, as if he had identified an enemy, when he learned that someone had paid his electric bill for him. The unexpected gift made him abruptly aware of what was happening. The townspeople were not only shunning him, they were actively cutting off every excuse he might have to go among them.
When he first understood his danger, his immediate reaction was to throw open a window and shout into the winter, "Go ahead! By hell, I don't need you!" But the issue was not simple enough to be blown away by bravado. As winter scattered into an early March spring, he became convinced that he needed to take some kind of action. He was a person,
human like any other; he was kept alive by a personal heart. He did not mean to stand by and approve this amputation.
So when his next phone bill came, he gathered his courage, shaved painstakingly, dressed himself in clothes with tough fabrics, laced his feet snugly into sturdy boots, and began the two-mile walk into town
to pay his bill in person.
That walk brought him to the door of the Bell Telephone Company with trepidation hanging around his head like a dank cloud. He stood in front of the gilt-lettered door for a time, thinking, These are the pale deaths . . .  and wondering about laughter. Then he collected himself, pulled open the door like the gust of a gale, and stalked up to the girl at the counter as if she had challenged him to single combat.
He put his hands palms down on the counter to steady them. Ferocity sprang across his teeth for an instant. He said, "My name is Thomas Covenant."
The girl was trimly dressed, and she held her arms crossed under her breasts, supporting them so that they showed to their best advantage. He forced himself to look up at her face. She was staring blankly past him. While he searched her for some tremor of revulsion, she glanced at him and asked, "Yes?"
"I want to pay my bill," he said, thinking, She doesn't know, she hasn't heard.
"Certainly, sir," she answered. "What is your number?"
He told her, and she moved languidly into another room to check her files.
The suspense of her absence made his fear pound in his throat. He needed some way to distract himself, occupy his attention. Abruptly, he reached into his pocket and brought out the sheet of paper the boy had given him. You're supposed to read it. He smoothed it out on the counter and looked at it.
The old printing said:
A real man-real in all the ways that we recognize as real-finds himself suddenly abstracted from the world and deposited in a physical situation which could not possibly exist: sounds have aroma, smells have color and depth, sights have texture, touches have pitch and timbre. There he is informed by a disembodied voice that he has been brought to that place as a champion for his world. He must fight to the death in single combat against a champion from another world. If he is defeated, he will die, and his world -the real world- will be destroyed because it lacks the inner strength to survive.
The man refuses to believe that what he is told is true. He asserts that he is either dreaming or hallucinating, and declines to be put in the false position of fighting to the death where no "real" danger exists. He is implacable in his determination to disbelieve his apparent situation, and does not defend himself when he is attacked by the champion of the other world.
Question: is the man's behavior courageous or cowardly? This is the fundamental question of ethics.
Ethics! Covenant snorted to himself. Who the hell makes these things up?
The next moment, the girl returned with a question in her face. "Thomas Covenant? Of Haven Farm? Sir, a deposit has been made on your account which covers everything for several months. Did you send us a large check recently?"
Covenant staggered inwardly as if he had been struck, then caught himself on the counter, listing to the side like a reefed galleon. Unconsciously he crushed the paper in his fist. He felt light-headed, heard words echoing in his ears: Virtually all societies condemn, denounce, cast out-you cannot hope.
He focused his attention on his cold feet and aching ankles while he fought to keep the violence at bay. With elaborate caution, he placed the crumpled sheet on the counter in front of the girl. Striving to sound conversational; he said, "It isn't catching, you know. You won't get it from methere's nothing to worry about. It isn't catching. Except for children."
The girl blinked at him as if she were amazed by the vagueness of her thoughts.
His shoulders hunched, strangling fury in his throat. He turned away with as much dignity as he could manage, and strode out 'into the sunlight, letting the door slam behind him. Hellfire! he swore to himself. Hellfire and bloody damnation.
Giddy with rage, he looked up and down the street. He could see the whole ominous length of the town from where he stood. In the direction of Haven Farm, the small businesses stood close together like teeth poised on either side of the road. The sharp sunlight made him feel vulnerable and alone. He checked his hands quickly for scratches or abrasions, then hurried down the gauntlet, as he moved, his numb feet felt unsure on the sidewalk, as if the cement were slick with despair. He believed that he displayed courage by not breaking into a run.
In a few moments the courthouse loomed ahead of him. On the sidewalk before it stood the old beggar. He had not moved. He was still staring at the sun, still muttering meaninglessly. His sign said, Beware, uselessly, like a warning that came too late.
As Covenant approached, he was struck by how dispossessed the old man looked. Beggars and fanatics, holy men, prophets of the apocalypse did not belong on that street in that sunlight; the frowning, belittling eyes of the stone columns held no tolerance for such preterite exaltation. And the scant coins he had collected were not enough for even one meal. The sight gave Covenant an odd pang of compassion. Almost in spite of himself, he stopped in front of the old man.
The beggar made no gesture, did not shift his contemplation of the sun; but his voice altered, and one clear word broke out of the formless hum:
"Give."
The order seemed to be directed at Covenant personally. As if on command, his gaze dropped to the bowl again. But the demand, the effort of coercion, brought back his anger. 1 don't owe you anything, he snapped silently.
Before he could pull away, the old man spoke again.
"I have warned you."
Unexpectedly, the statement struck Covenant like an insight, an intuitive summary of all his experiences in the past year. Through his anger, his decision came immediately. With a twisted expression on his face, he fumbled for his wedding ring.
He had never before removed his white gold wedding band; despite his divorce, and Joan's unanswering silence, he had kept the ring on his finger. It was an icon of himself. It reminded him of where he had been and where he was-of promises made and broken, companionship lost, helplessness-and of his vestigial humanity. Now he tore it off his left hand and dropped it in the bowl. "That's worth more than a few coins," he said, and stamped away.
"Wait."
The word carried such authority that Covenant stopped again. He stood still, husbanding his rage, until he felt the man's hand on his arm. Then he turned and looked into pale blue eyes as blank as if they were still studying the secret fire of the sun. The old man was tall with power.
A sudden insecurity, a sense of proximity to matters he did not understand, disturbed Covenant. But he pushed it away. "Don't touch me. I'm a leper."
The vacant stare seemed to miss him completely, as if he did not exist or the eyes were blind; but the old man's voice was clear and sure.
"You are in perdition, my son."
Moistening his lips with his tongue, Covenant responded, "No, old man. This is normal-human beings are like this. Futile." As if he were quoting a law of leprosy, he said to himself, Futility is the defining characteristic of life. "That's what life is like. I just have less bric-a-brac cluttering up the facts than most people."
"So young-and already so bitter."
Covenant had not heard sympathy for a long time, and the sound of it affected him acutely. His anger retreated, leaving his throat tight and awkward. "Come on, old man," he said. "We didn't make the world. All we have to do is live in it. We're all in the same boat-one way or another."
"Did we not?"
But without waiting for an answer the beggar went back to humming his weird tune. He held Covenant there until he had reached a break in his song. Then a new quality came into his voice, an aggressive tone that took advantage of Covenant's unexpected vulnerability.
"Why not destroy yourself?"
A sense of pressure expanded in Covenant's chest, cramping his heart. The pale blue eyes were exerting some kind of peril over him. Anxiety tugged at him. He wanted to jerk away from the old face, go through his VSE, make sure that he was safe. But he could not; the blank gaze held him. Finally, he said, "That's too easy."
His reply met no opposition, but still his trepidation grew. Under the duress of the old man's will, he stood on the precipice of his future and looked down at jagged, eager dangers-rough damnations multiplied below him. He recognized the various possible deaths of lepers. But the panorama steadied him. It was like a touchstone of familiarity in a fantastic situation; it put him back on known ground. He found that he could turn away from his fear to say, "Look, is there anything I can do for you? Food? A place to stay? You can have what I've got."
As if Covenant had said some crucial password, the old man's eyes lost their perilous cast.
"You have done too much. Gifts like this I return, to the giver."
He extended his bowl toward Covenant.
"Take back the ring. Be true. You need not fail."
Now the tone of command was gone. In its place, Covenant heard gentle supplication. He hesitated, wondering what this old man had to do with him. But he had to make some kind of response. He took the ring and replaced it on his left hand. Then he said, "Everybody fails. But I am going to survive as long as I can."
The old man sagged, as if he had just shifted a load of prophecy or commandment onto Covenant's shoulders. His voice sounded frail now.
"That is as it may be."
Without another word, he turned and moved away. He leaned on his staff like an exhausted prophet, worn out with uttering visions. His staff rang curiously on the sidewalk, as if the wood were harder than cement.
Covenant gazed after the wind-swayed ocher robe and the fluttering hair until the old man turned a corner and vanished. Then he shook himself, started into his VSE. But his eyes stopped on his wedding ring. The band seemed to hang loosely on his finger, as if it were too big for him. Perdition, he thought. A deposit has been made. I've got to do something before they barricade the streets against me.
For a while, he stood where he was and tried to think of a course of action. Absently, he looked up the courthouse columns to the stone heads. They had careless eyes and on their lips a spasm of disgust carved into perpetual imminence, compelling and forever incomplete. They gave him an idea. Casting a silent curse at them, he started down the walk again. He had decided to see his lawyer, to demand that the woman who handled his contracts and financial business find some legal recourse against the kind of black charity which was cutting him off from the town. Get those payments revoked, he thought. It's not possible that they can pay my debts-without my consent.
The lawyer's office was in a building at the corner of a cross street on the opposite side of the road. A minute's brisk walking brought Covenant to the corner and the town's only traffic light. He felt a need to hurry, to act on his decision before his distrust of lawyers and all public machinery convinced him that his determination was folly. He had to resist a temptation to cross against the light.
The signal changed slowly, but at last it was green his way. He stepped out onto the crosswalk.
Before he had taken three steps, he heard a siren. Red lights flaring, a police car sprang out of an alley into the main street. It skidded and swerved with the speed of its turn, then aimed itself straight at Covenant's heart.
He stopped as if caught in the grip of an unseen fist. He wanted to move, but he could only stand suspended, trapped, looking down the muzzle of the hurtling car. For an instant, he heard the frantic scream of brakes. Then he crumbled.
As he dropped, he had a vague sense that he was falling too soon, that he had not been hit yet. But he could not help himself; he was too afraid, afraid of being crushed. After all his self-protections, to die like this! Then he became aware of a huge blackness which stood behind the sunlight and the gleaming store-windows and the shriek of tires. The light and the asphalt against his head seemed to be nothing more than paintings on a black background; and now the background asserted itself, reached in and bore him down. Blackness radiated through the sunlight like a cold beam of night.
He thought that he was having a nightmare. Absurdly, he heard the old beggar saying, Be true. You need not fail.
The darkness poured through, swamping the day, and the only thing that Covenant was sure he could see was a single red gleam from the police car-a red bolt hot and clear and deadly, transfixing his forehead like a spear.

Three: Invitation to a Betrayal


FOR a time that he could only measure in heartbeats, Covenant hung in the darkness. The red, impaling light was the only fixed point in a universe that seemed to seethe around him. He felt that he might behold a massive moving of heaven and earth, if only he knew where to look; but the blackness and the hot red beam on his forehead prevented him from turning away, and he had to let the currents that swirled around him pass unseen.
Under the pressure of the ferocious light, he could feel every throb of his pulse distinctly in his temples, as if it were his mind which hammered out his life, not his heart. The beats were slow-too slow for the amount of apprehension he felt. He could not conceive what was happening to him. But each blow shook him as if the very structure of his brain were under assault.
Abruptly, the bloody spear of light wavered, then split in two. He was moving toward the light--or the light was approaching him. The two flaming spots were eyes.
The next instant, he heard laughter-high, shrill glee full of triumph and old spite. The voice crowed like some malevolent rooster heralding the dawn of hell, and Covenant's pulse trembled at the sound.
"Done it!" the voice cackled. "I! Mine!" It shrilled away into laughter again.
Covenant was close enough to see the eyes clearly now. They had no whites or pupils; red balls filled the sockets, and light moiled in them like lava. Their heat was so close that Covenant's forehead burned.
Then the eyes flared, seemed to ignite the air around them. Flames spread out, sending a lurid glow around Covenant.
He found himself in a cavern deep in stone. Its walls caught and held the light, so that the cave stayed bright after the single flare of the eyes. The rock was smooth, but broken into hundreds of irregular facets, as if the cavern had been carved with an erratic knife. Entrances gaped in the walls around the circumference of the cave. High above his head, the roof gathered into a thick cluster of stalactites, but the floor was fiat and worn as if by the passing of many feet. Reflections sprang through the stalactites above, so that the cluster swarmed with red gleamings.
The chamber was full of a rank stench, an acrid odor with a sickly sweet under-smell-burning sulfur over the reek of rotting flesh. Covenant gagged on it, and on the sight of the being whose eyes had held him.
Crouched on a low dais near the center of the cave was a creature with long, scrawny limbs, hands as huge and heavy as shovels, a thin, hunched torso, and a head like a battering ram. As he crouched, his knees came up almost to the level of his ears. One hand was braced on the rock in front of him, the other gripped a long wooden staff shod with metal and intricately carved from end to end. His grizzled mouth was rigid with laughter, and his red eyes seemed to bubble like magma.
"Ha! Done it!" he shrieked again. "Called him. My power. Kill them all!" As his high voice ranted, he slavered hungrily. "Lord Drool! Master! Me!"
The creature leaped to his feet, capering with mad pride. He strode closer to his victim, and Covenant recoiled with a loathing he could not control.
Holding his staff near the center with both hands, the creature shouted, "Kill you! Take your power! Crush them all! Be Lord Drool!" He raised his staff as if to strike Covenant with it.
Then another voice entered the cavern. It was deep and resonant, powerful enough to fill the air without effort, and somehow deadly, as if an abyss were speaking. "Back, Rockworm!" it commanded. "This prey is too great for you. I claim him."
The creature jabbed his face toward the ceiling and cried, "Mine! My Staff! You saw. I called him. You saw!"
Covenant followed the red eyes upward, but he could see nothing there except the dizzy chiaroscuro of the clustered stone spikes.
"You had aid," the deep voice said. "The Staff was too hard a matter for you. You would have destroyed it in simple irritation, had I not taught you some of its uses. And my aid has its price. Do whatever else you wish. I claim this prize. It belongs to me."
The creature's rage subsided, as if he had suddenly remembered some secret advantage. "My Staff," he muttered darkly. "I have it. You are not safe."
"You threaten me?" The deep voice bristled, and its dangers edged closer to the surface. "Watch and ward, Drool Rockworm! Your doom grows upon you. Behold! I have begun!"
There was a low, grinding noise, as of great teeth breaking against each other, and a chilling mist intervened between Covenant and Drool, gathered and swirled and thickened until Drool was blocked from Covenant's sight. At first, the mist glowed with the light of the burning stones, but as it swirled the red faded into the dank, universal gray of fogs. The vile reek melted into a sweeter smell-attar, the odor of, funerals. Despite the blindness of the mist, Covenant` felt that he was no longer in Drool's cavern.
The change gave him no relief. Fear and bewilderment sucked at him as if he were sinking in nightmare. That unbodied voice dismayed him. As the fog blew around him his legs shuddered and bent, and he fell to his knees.
"You do well to pray to me," the voice intoned. Its deadliness shocked Covenant like a confrontation with grisly murder. "There are no other hopes or helps for a man amid the wrack of your fate. My Enemy will not aid you. It was he who chose you for this doom. And when he has chosen, he does not give; he takes." A raw timbre of contempt ran through the voice, scraping Covenant's nerves as it passed. "Yes, you would do well to pray to me. I might ease you of your burden. Whatever health or strength you ask is mine to give. For I have begun my attack upon this age, and the future is mine. I will not fail again."
Covenant's mind lay under the shock of the voice. But the offer of health penetrated him, and his heart jumped. He felt the beat clearly in his chest, felt his heart laboring against the burden of his fear. But he was still too stricken to speak.
Over his silence, the voice continued, "Kevin was a fool-fey, anile and gutless. They are all fools. Look you, groveler. The mighty High Lord Kevin, son of Loric and great-grandson of Berek Lord-Fatherer whom I hate, stood where you now kneel, and he thought to destroy me. He discovered my designs, recognized some measure of my true stature though the dotard had set me on his right side in the Council for long years without sensing his peril-saw at the last who I was. Then there was war between us, war that blasted the west and threatened his precious Keep itself. The feller fist was mine and he knew it. When his armies faltered and his power waned, he lost himself in despair-he became mine in despair. He thought that he still might utterly undo me. Therefore he met me in that cavern from which I have rescued you Kiril Threndor, Heart of Thunder.
"Drool Rockworm does not know what a black rock it is on which he stands. And that is not his only ignorance-but of my deeper plans I say nothing. He serves me well in his way, though he does not intend service. Likewise will you and those timid Lords serve me, whether you choose or no. Let them grope through their shallow mysteries for a time, barely fearing that I am alive. They have not mastered the seventh part of dead Kevin's Lore, and yet in their pride they dare to name themselves Earthfriends, servants of Peace. They are too blind to perceive their own arrogance. But I will teach them to see.
"In truth it is already too late for them. They will come to Kiril Threndor, and I will teach them things to darken their souls. It is fitting. There Kevin met and dared me in his despair. And I accepted. The fool! I could hardly speak the words for laughing. He thought that such spells might unbind me.
"But the Power which upholds me has stood since the creation of Time. Therefore when Kevin dared me to unleash the forces that would strike the Land and all its accursed creations into dust, I took the dare. Yes, and laughed until there was doubt in his face before the end. That folly brought the age of the Old Lords to its ruin-but I remain. I! Together we stood in Kiril Threndor, blind Kevin and I. Together we uttered the Ritual of Desecration. Ah, the fool! He was already enslaved to me and knew it not. Proud of his Lore, he did not know that the very Law which he served preserved me through that cataclysm, though all but a few of his own people and works were stricken into death.
"True, I was reduced for a time. I have spent a thousand years gnawing my desires like a beaten cur. The price of that has yet to be paid-for it and other things I shall exact my due. But I was not destroyed. And when Drool found the Staff and recognized it, and could not use it, I took my chance again. I will have the future of this life, to waste or hold as I desire. So pray to me, groveler. Reject the doom that my Enemy has created for you. You will not have many chances to repent."
The fog and the attar-laden air seemed to weaken Covenant, as if the strength were being absorbed from his blood. But his heart -beat on, and he clung to it for a defense against the fear. He wrapped his arms about his chest and bent low, trying to shelter himself from the cold. "What doom?" he forced himself to say. His voice sounded pitiful and lost in the mist.
"He intends you to be my final foe. He chose, groveler, with a might in your hands such as no mortal has ever held before-chose you to destroy me. But he will find that I am not so easily mastered. You have might-wild magic which preserves your life at this moment-but you will never know what it is. You will not be able to fight me at the last. No, you are the victim of his expectations, and I cannot free you by. death-not yet. But we can turn that strength against him, and rid him of the Earth entirely."
"Health?" Covenant looked painfully up from the ground. "You said health."
"Whatever health you lack, groveler. Only pray to me, while I am still patient."
But the voice's contempt cut too deep. Covenant's violence welled up in the wound. He began to fight. Heaving himself up off his knees, he thought, No. I'm not a groveler. With his teeth gritted to stop his trembling, he asked, "Who are you?"
As if sensing its mistake, the voice became smoother. "I have had many names," it said. "To the Lords of Revelstone, I am Lord Foul the Despiser; 6o the Giants of Seareach, Satansheart and Soulcrusher. The Ramen name me Fangthane. In the dreams of the Bloodguard, I am Corruption. But the people of the Land call me the Gray Slayer."
Distinctly, Covenant said, "Forget it."
"Fool!" ground the voice, and its force flattened Covenant on the rock. Forehead pressed against the stone, he lay and waited in terror for the anger of the voice to annihilate him. "I do not take or eschew action at your bidding. And I will not forget this. I see that your pride is offended by my contempt. Groveler, I will teach you the true meaning of contempt before I am done. But not now. That does not meet my purpose. Soon I will be strong enough to wrest the wild magic from you, and then you will learn to your cost that my contempt is without limit, my desires bottomless.
"But I have wasted time enough. Now to my purpose. Heed me well, groveler. I have a task for you. You will bear a message for me to Revelstone-to the Council of Lords.
"Say to the Council of Lords, and to High Lord Prothall son of Dwillian, that the uttermost limit of their span of days upon the Land is seven times seven years from this present time. Before the end of those days are numbered, I will have the command of life and death in my hand. And as a token that what I say is the one word of truth, tell them this: Drool Rockworm, Cavewight of Mount Thunder, has found the Staff of Law, which was lost ten times a hundred years ago by Kevin at the Ritual of Desecration. Say to them that the task appointed to their generation is to regain the Staff. Without it, they will not be able to resist me for seven years, and my complete victory will be achieved six times seven years earlier than it would be else.
"As for you, groveler: do not fail with this message. If you do not bring it before the Council, then every human in the Land will be dead before ten seasons have passed. You do not understand-but I tell you Drool Rockworm has the Staff, and that it is a cause for terror. He will be enthroned at Lord's Keep in two years if the message fails. Already, the Cavewights are marching to his call; and wolves, and urviles of the Demondim, answer the power of the Staff. But war is not the worst peril. Drool delves ever deeper into the dark roots of Mount Thunder-Gravin Threndor, Peak of the Fire-Lions. And there are banes
buried in the deeps of the Earth too potent and terrible for any mortal to control. They would make of the universe a hell forever. But such a bane Drool seeks. He searches for the Illearth Stone. If he becomes its master, there will be woe for low and high alike until Time itself falls.
"Do not fail with my message, groveler. You have met Drool. Do you relish dying in his hands?"
The voice paused, and Covenant held his head in his arms, trying to silence the echo of Foul's threats. This is a dream, he thought. A dream! But the blindness of the mist made him feel trapped, encapsulated in insanity. He shuddered with the force of his desire for escape and warmth. "Go away! Leave me alone!"
"One word more," Foul said, "a final caution. Do not forget whom to fear at the last. I have had to be content with killing and torment. But now my plans are laid, and I have begun. I shall not rest until I have eradicated hope from the Earth. Think on that, and be dismayed!"
Dismayed hung prolonged in the air, while around it grew the noise of grinding, great boulders crushing lesser rocks between them. The sound rushed down onto Covenant, then passed over him and away, leaving him on his knees with his head braced between his arms and his mind blank with panic. He remained rigid there until the grinding was gone, and a low hum of wind rose through the new silence. Then he opened his eyes fearfully, and saw sunlight on the rock before his face.

Four: Kevin's Watch


HE stretched himself flat and lay still for a long time, welcoming the sun's warmth into his fog chilled bones. The wind whistled a quiet monody around him, but did not touch him; and soon after the trouble of Foul's passing had ended, he heard the call of faraway birds. He lay still and breathed deeply, drawing new strength into his limbs-grateful for sunshine and the end of nightmare.
Eventually, however, he remembered that there had been several people nearby during his accident in the street. They were strangely silent; the town itself seemed hushed. The police car must have injured him worse than he realized. Leper's anxiety jerked him up onto his hands and knees.
He found himself on a smooth stone slab. It was roughly circular, ten feet broad, and surrounded by a wall three feet high. Above him arched an unbroken expanse of blue sky. It domed him from rim to rim of the wall as if the slab were somehow impossibly afloat in the heavens.
No. His breath turned to sand in his throat. Where-?
Then a panting voice called, "Hail!" He could not locate it; it sounded vague with distance, like a hallucination. "Hail!"
His heart began to tremble. What is this?
"Kevin's Watch! Are you in need?"
What the hell is this?
Abruptly, he heard a scrambling noise behind him. His muscles jumped; he dove to the wall and flipped around, put his back to it.
Opposite him, across a gap of open air beyond the wall, stood a mountain. It rose hugely from cliffs level with his perch to a sun-bright peak still tipped with snow high above him, and its craggy sides- filled nearly half the slab's horizons. His first impression was one of proximity, but an instant later he realized that the cliff was at least a stone's throw away from him.
Facing squarely toward the mountain, there was a gap in the wall. The low, scrambling sound seemed to come from this gap.
He wanted to go across the slab, look for the source of the noise. But his heart was laboring too hard; he could not move. He was afraid of what he might see.
The sound came closer. Before he could react, a girl thrust her head and shoulders up into the gap, braced her arms on the stone. When she caught sight of him, she stopped to return his stare.
Her long full hair-brown with flashes of pale honey scattered through it-blew about her on the breeze; her skin was deeply shaded with tan, and the dark blue fabric of her dress had a pattern of white leaves woven into the shoulders. She was panting and flushed as if she had just finished a long climb, but she met Covenant's gaze with frank wonder and, interest.
She did not look any older than sixteen.
The openness of her scrutiny only tightened his distress. He glared at her as if she were an apparition.
After a moment's hesitation, she panted, "Are you well?" Then her words began to hurry with excitement. "I did not know whether to come myself or to seek help. From the hills, I saw a gray cloud over Kevin's Watch, and within it there seemed to be a battle. I saw you stand and fall. I did not know what to do. Then I thought, better a small help soon than a large help late. So I came." She stopped herself, then asked again, "Are you well?"
Well?
He had been hit -His hands were only scraped, bruised, as if he had used them to absorb his fall. There was a low ache of impact in his head. But his clothing showed no damage, no sign that he had been struck and sent skidding over the pavement.
He jabbed his chest with numb fingers, jabbed his abdomen and legs, but no sharp pain answered his probing. He seemed essentially uninjured.
But that car must have hit him somewhere.
Well?
He stared at the girl as if the word had no meaning.
Faced with his silence, she gathered her courage and climbed up through the gap to stand before him against the background of the mountain. He saw that she wore a dark blue shift like a long tunic, with a white cord knotted at the waist. On her feet she had sandals which tied around her ankles. She was slim, delicately figured; and her fine eyes were wide with apprehension, uncertainty, eagerness. She took two steps toward him as if he were a figure of peril, then knelt to look more closely at his aghast incomprehension.
What the bloody hell is this?
Carefully, respectfully, she asked, "How may I aid you? You are a stranger to the Land-that I see. You have fought an ill cloud. Command me." His silence seemed to daunt her. She dropped her eyes. "Will you not speak?"
What's happening to me?
The next instant, she gasped with excitement, pointed in awe at his right hand. "Halfhand! Do legends live again?" Wonder lit her face. "Berek Halfhand!" she breathed. "Is it true?"
Berek? At first, he could not remember where he had heard that name before. Then it came back to him. Berek! In cold panic he realized that the nightmare was not over, that this girl and Lord Foul the Despiser were both part of the same experience.
Again he saw darkness crouching behind the brilliant blue sky. It loomed over him, beat toward his head like vulture wings.
Where-?
Awkwardly, as if his joints were half frozen with dread, he lurched to his feet.
At once, an immense panorama sprang into view below him, attacked his sight like a bludgeon of exhilaration and horror. He was on a stone platform four thousand feet or more above the earth. Birds glided and wheeled under his perch. The air was as clean and clear as crystal, and through it the great sweep of the landscape seemed immeasurably huge, so that his eyes ached with trying to see it all. Hills stretched away directly under him; plains unrolled toward the horizons on both sides; a river angled silver in the sunlight out of the hills on his left. All was luminous with spring, as if it had just been born in that morning's dew.
Bloody hell!
The giddy height staggered him. Vulture wings of darkness beat at his head. Vertigo whirled up at him, made the earth veer.
He did not know where he was. He had never seen this before. How had he come here? He had been hit by a police car, and Foul had brought him here. Foul had brought him here?
Brought me here?
Uninjured?
He reeled in terror toward the girl and the mountain. Three dizzy steps took him to the gap in the parapet. There he saw that he was on the tip of a slim splinter of stone-at least five hundred feet long-that pointed obliquely up from the base of the cliff like a rigid finger accusing the sky. Stairs had been cut into the upper surface of the shaft, but it was as steep as a ladder.
For one spinning instant, he thought dumbly, I've got to get out of here. None of this is happening to me.
Then the whole insanity of the situation recoiled on him, struck at him out of the vertiginous air like the claws of a condor. He stumbled; the maw of the fall gaped below him. He started to scream silently:
No!!
As he pitched forward, the girl caught his arm, heaved at him. He swung and toppled to the stone within the parapet, pulled his knees up against his chest, covered his head.
Insane! he cried as if he were gibbering.
Darkness writhed like nausea inside his skull. Visions of madness burned across his mindscape.
How?
Impossible!
He had been crossing the street. He insisted upon that desperately. The light had been green.
Where?
He had been hit by a police car.
Impossible!
It had aimed itself straight for his heart, and it had hit him.
And not injured him?!
Mad. I'm going mad mad mad.
And not injured him?
Nightmare. None of this is happening, is happening, is happening.
Through the wild whirl of his misery, another hand suddenly clasped his. The grip was hard, urgent; it caught him like an anchor.
Nightmare! I'm dreaming. Dreaming!
The thought flared through his panic like a revelation. Dreaming! Of course he was dreaming. Juggling furiously, he put the pieces together. He had been hit by a police car-knocked unconscious. Concussion. He might be out for hours - days. And while he was out, he was having this dream.
That was the answer. He clutched it as if it were the girl's grip on his straining hand. It steadied him against his vertigo, simplified his fear. But it was not enough. The darkness still swarmed at him as if he were carrion Foul had left behind.
How?
Where do you get dreams like this?
He could not bear to think about it; he would go mad. He fled from it as if it had already started to gnaw on his bones.
Don't think about it. Don't try to understand. Madness-madness is the only danger. Survive! Get going. Do something. Don't look back.
He forced his eyes open; and as he focused on the sunlight, the darkness receded, dropped away into the background and came hovering slowly behind him as if it were waiting for him to turn and face it, fall prey to it.
The girl was kneeling beside him. She had his maimed right hand clamped in both of hers, and concern stood like tears in her eyes. "Berek," she murmured painfully as he met her gaze, "oh, Berek. What ill assails you? I know not what to do."
She had already done enough -helped him to master himself, resist the pull of the dangerous questions he could not answer. But his fingers were numb; parts of her clasp on his hand he could not feel at all. He dredged himself into a sitting position, though the exertion made him feel faint. "I'm a leper," he said weakly. "Don't touch me."
Hesitantly, she loosened her grip, as if she were not sure he meant what he said, not sure he knew what he was saying.
With an effort that seemed harsh because of his weakness, he withdrew his hand.
She caught her lower lip between her teeth in chagrin. As if she feared she had offended him, she moved back and sat down against the opposite wall.
But he could see that she was consumed with interest in him. She could not remain silent long. After a moment, she asked softly, "Is it wrong to touch you? I meant no harm. You are Berek Halfhand, the Lord-Fatherer. An ill I could not see assailed you. How could I bear to see you tormented so?"
"I'm a leper," he repeated, trying to conserve his strength. But her expression told him that the word conveyed nothing to her. "I'm sick-I have a disease. You don't know the danger."
"If I touch you, will I become-'sick'?"
"Who knows?" Then, because he could hardly believe the evidence of his eyes and ears, he asked, "Don't you know what leprosy is?"
"No," she answered with a return of her earlier wonder. "No." She shook her head, and her hair swung lightly about her face. "But I am not afraid."
"Be afraid!" he rasped. The girl's ignorance or innocence made him vehement. Behind her words, he heard wings beating like violence. "It's a disease that gnaws at you. It gnaws at you until your fingers and toes and hands and feet and arms and legs turn rotten and fall off. It makes you blind and ugly."
"May it be healed? Perhaps the Lords-"
"There's no cure."
He wanted to go on, to spit out some of the bitterness Foul had left in him. But he was too drained to sustain anger. He needed to rest and think, explore the implications of his dilemma.
"Then how may I aid you? I know not what to do. You are Berek Ha-"
"I'm not," he sighed. The girl started, and into her surprise he repeated, "I'm not."
"Then who?. You have the omen of the hand, for the legends say that Berek Earthfriend may come again. Are you a Lord?"
With a tired gesture he held her question at bay. He needed to think. But when he closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the parapet, he felt fear crowding up in him. He had to move, go forward-flee along the path of the dream.
He pulled his gaze back into focus on the girl's face. For the first time, he noticed that she was pretty. Even her awe, the way she hung on his words, was pretty. And she had no fear of lepers.
After a last instant of hesitation, he said, "I'm Thomas Covenant."
"Thomas Covenant?" His name sounded ungainly in her mouth. "It is a strange name-a strange name to match your strange apparel. Thomas Covenant." She inclined her head in a slow bow to him.
Strange, he thought softly. The strangeness was mutual. He still had no conception of what he would have to deal with in this dream. He would have to find out where he stood. Following the girl's lead, he asked, "Who are you?"
"I am Lena," she replied formally, "daughter of
Atiaran. My father is Trell, Gravelingas of the rhadhamaerl. Our home is in Mithil Stonedown. Have you been to our Stonedown?"
"No." He was tempted to ask her what a Stonedown was, but he had a more important question in mind. "Where-" The word caught in his throat as if it were a dangerous concession to darkness. "Where are we?"
"We are upon Kevin's Watch." Springing lightly to her feet, she stretched her arms to the earth and the sky. "Behold."
Gritting his resolve, Covenant turned and knelt against the parapet. With his chest braced on the rim, he forced himself to look.
"This is the Land," Lena said joyfully, as if the outspread earth had a power to thrill her. "It reaches far beyond seeing to the north, west, and east, though the old songs say that High Lord Kevin stood here and saw the whole of the Land and all its people. So this place is named Kevin's Watch. Is it possible that you do not know this?"
Despite the coolness of the breeze, Covenant was sweating. Vertigo knuckled his temples, and only the hard edge of the stone against his heart kept it under control. "I don't know anything," he groaned into the open fall.
Lena glanced at him anxiously, then after a moment turned back to the Land. Pointing with one slim arm to the northwest, she said, "There is the Mithil River. Our Stonedown stands beside it, but hidden behind this mountain. It flows from the Southron Range behind us to join the Black River. That is the northern bound of the South Plains, where the soil is not generous and few people live. There are only five Stonedowns in the South Plains. But in this north-going line of hills live some Woodhelvennin.
"East of the hills are the Plains of Ra." Her voice sparkled as she went on: "That is the home of the wild free horses, the Ranyhyn, and their tenders the Ramen. For fifty leagues across the Plains they gal
lop, and serve none that they do not themselves choose.
"Ah, Thomas Covenant," she sighed, "it is my dream to see those horses. Most. of my people are too content-they do not travel, and have not seen so much as a Woodhelven. But I wish to walk the Plains of Ra, and see the horses galloping."
After a long pause, she resumed: "These mountains are the Southron Range. Behind them are the Wastes, and the Gray Desert. No life or passage is there; all the Land is north and west and east from us. And we stand on Kevin's Watch, where the highest of the Old Lords stood at the last battle, before the coming of the Desolation. Our people remember that, and avoid the Watch as a place of ill omen. But Atiaran my mother brought me here to teach me of the Land. And in two years I will be old enough to attend the Loresraat and learn for myself, as my mother did. Do you know," she said proudly, "my mother has studied with the Lorewardens?" She looked at Covenant as if she expected him to be impressed. But then her eyes fell, and she murmured, "But you are a Lord, and know all these things. You listen to my talk so that you may laugh at my ignorance."
Under the spell of her voice, and the pressure of his vertigo, he had a momentary vision of what the Land must have looked like after Kevin had unleashed the Ritual of Desecration. Behind the luminous morning, he saw hills ripped barren, soil blasted, rank water trickling through vile fens in the riverbed, and over it all a thick gloom of silence-no birds, no insects, no animals, no people, nothing living to raise one leaf or hum or growl or finger against the damage. Then sweat ran into his eyes, blurred them like tears. He pulled away from the view and seated himself again with his back to the wall. "No," he murmured to Lena, thinking, You don't understand. "I did all my laughing-long ago."
Now he seemed to see the way to go forward, to flee the dark madness which hovered over him. In that brief vision of Desolation, he found the path of the dream. Skipping transitions so that he would not have to ask or answer certain questions, he said, "I've got to go to the Council of Lords."
He saw in her face that she wanted to ask him why. But she seemed to feel that it was not her place to question his purpose. His mention of the Council only verified his stature in her eyes. She moved toward the stair. "Come," she said. "We must go to the Stonedown. There a way will be found to take you to Revelstone." She looked as if she wanted to go with him.
But the thought of the stair hurt him. How could he negotiate that descent? He could not so much as look over the parapet without dizziness. When Lena repeated, "Come," he shook his head. He lacked the courage. Yet he had to keep himself active somehow. To Lena's puzzlement, he said, "How long ago was this Desolation?"
"I do not know," she replied soberly. "But the people of the South Plains came back across the mountains from the bare Wastes twelve generations past. And it is said that they were forewarned by High Lord Kevin-they escaped, and lived in exile in the wilderness by nail and tooth and rhadhamaerl lore for five hundred years. It is a legacy we do not forget. At fifteen, each of us takes the Oath of Peace, and we live for the life and beauty of the Land."
He hardly heard her; he was not specifically interested in what she said. But he needed the sound of her voice to steady him while he searched himself for strength. With an effort, he found another question he could ask. Breathing deeply, he said, "What were you doing in the mountains-why were you up where you could see me here?"
"I was stone-questing," she answered. "I am learning suru-pa-maerl. Do you know this craft?"
"No," he said between breaths. "Tell me."
"It is a craft I am learning from Acence my mother's sister, and she learned it from Tomal, the best Craftmaster in the memory of our Stonedown. He also studied for a time in the Loresraat. But suru-pa-maerl is a craft of making images from stones
without binding or shaping. I walk the hills and search out the shapes of rocks and pebbles. And when I discover a form that I understand, I take it home and find a place for it, balancing or interlocking with other forms until a new form is made.
"Sometimes, when I am very brave, I smooth a roughness to make the joining of the stones steadier. In this way, I remake the broken secrets of the Earth, and give beauty to the people." --
Vaguely, Covenant murmured, "It must be hard to think of a shape and then find the rocks to fit it."
"That is not the way. I look at the stones, and seek for the shapes that are already in them. I do not ask the Earth to give me a horse. The craft is in learning to see what it is the Earth chooses to offer. Perhaps it will be a horse."
"I would like to see your work." Covenant paid no attention to what he was saying. The stairs beckoned him like the seductive face of forgetfulness, in which lepers lost their self-protective disciplines, their hands and feet, their lives.
But he was dreaming. The way to endure a dream was to flow with it until it ended. He had to make that descent in order to survive. That need outweighed all other considerations.
Abruptly, convulsively, he hauled himself to his feet. Planting himself squarely in the center of the circle, he ignored the mountain and the sky, ignored the long fall below him, and gave himself a thorough examination. Trembling, he probed his still living nerves for aches or twinges, scanned his clothing for snags, rents, inspected his numb hands.
He had to put that stair behind him.
He could survive it because it was a dream-it could not kill him-and because he could not stand all this darkness beating about his ears.
"Now, listen," he snapped at Lena. "I've got to go first. And don't give me that confused look. I told you I'm a leper. My hands and feet are numb-no feeling. I can't grip. And I'm-not very good at heights. I might fall. I don't want you below me. You-" He balked, then went on roughly, "You've been decent to me, and I haven't had to put up with that for a long time."
She winced at his tone. "Why are you angry? How have I offended you?"
By being nice to me! he rasped silently. His face was gray with fear as he turned, dropped to his hands and knees, and backed out through the gap.
In the first rush of trepidation, he lowered his feet to the stairs with his eyes closed. But he could not face the descent without his eyes; the leper's habit of watching himself, and the need to have all his senses alert, were too strong. Yet with his eyes open the height made his head reel. So he strove to keep his gaze on the rock in front of him. From the first step, he knew that his greatest danger lay in the numbness of his feet. Numb hands made him feel unsure of every grip, and before he had gone fifty feet he was clenching the edges so hard that his shoulders began to cramp. But he could see his hands, see that they were on the rock, that the aching in his wrists and elbows was not a lie. His feet he could not see -not unless he looked down. He could only tell that his foot was on a stair when his ankle felt the pressure of his weight. In each downward step he lowered himself onto a guess. If he felt an unexpected flex in his arch, he had to catch himself with his arms and get more of his foot onto the unseen stair. He tried kicking his feet forward so that the jar of contact would tell him when his toes were against the edge of the next stair; but when he misjudged, his shins or knees struck the stone corners, and that sharp pain nearly made his legs fold.
Climbing down stair by stair, staring at his hands with sweat streaming into his eyes, he cursed the fate which had cut away two of his fingers-two fingers less to save himself with if his feet failed. In addition, the absence of half his hand made him feel that his right hold was weaker than his left, that his weight was pulling leftward off the stair. He kept reaching his feet to the right to compensate, and kept missing the stairs on that side.
He could not get the sweat out of his eyes. It stung him like blindness, but he feared to release one hand to wipe his forehead, feared even to shake his head because he might lose his balance. Cramps tormented his back and shoulders. He had to grit his teeth to keep from crying for help.
As if she sensed his distress, Lena shouted, "Halfway!"
He crept on downward, step by step.
Helplessly, he felt himself moving faster. His muscles were failing-the strain on his knees and elbows was too great and with each step he had less control over his descent. He forced himself to stop and rest, though his terror screamed for him to go on, get the climb over with. For a wild instant, he thought that he would simply turn and leap, hoping he was close enough to land on the mountain slope and live. Then he heard the sound of Lena's feet approaching his head. He wanted to reach up and grab her ankles, force her to save him. But even that hope seemed futile, and he hung where he was, quivering.
His breath rattled harshly through his clenched teeth, and he almost did not understand Lena's shout:
"Thomas Covenant! Be strong! Only fifty steps remain!"
With a shudder that almost tore him loose from the rock, he started down again.
The last steps passed in a loud chaos of cramps and sweat blindness-and then he was down, lying flat on the level base of the Watch and gasping at the cries of his limbs. For a long time, he covered his face and listened to the air lurching in and out of his lungs like sobs-listened until the sound relaxed and he could breathe more quietly.
When he finally looked up, he saw the blue sky, the long black finger of Kevin's Watch pointing at the noon sun, the towering slope of the mountain, and Lena bending over him so low that her hair almost
brushed his face.

Five: Mithil Stonedown


COVENANT felt strangely purged, as if he had passed through an ordeal, survived a ritual trial by vertigo. He had put the stair behind him. In his relief, he was sure that he had found the right answer to the particular threat of madness, the need for a real and comprehensible explanation to his situation, which had surrounded him on Kevin's Watch. He looked up at the radiant sky, and it appeared pure, untainted by carrion eaters.
Go forward, he said to himself. Don't think about it. Survive.
As he thought this, he looked up into Lena's soft brown eyes and found that she was smiling.
"Are you well?" she asked.
"Well?" he echoed. "That's not an easy question." It drew him up into a sitting position. Scanning his hands, he discovered blood on the heels and fingertips. His palms were scraped raw, and when he probed his knees and shins and elbows they burned painfully.
Ignoring the ache of his muscles, he pushed to his feet. "Lena, this is important," he said. "I've got to clean my hands."
She stood also, but he could see that she did not understand. "Look!" He brandished his hands in front of her. "I'm a leper. I can't feel this. No pain." When she still seemed confused, he went on, "That's how I lost my fingers. I got hurt and infected, and they had to cut my hand apart. I've got to get some soap and water."
Touching the scar on his right hand, she said, "The sickness does this?"
"Yes!"
"There is a stream on the way toward the Stonedown," said Lena, "and hurtloam near it."
"Let's go." Brusquely, Covenant motioned for her to lead the way. She accepted his urgency with a nod, and started at once down the path.
It went west from the base of Kevin's Watch along a ledge in the steep mountain slope until it reached a cluttered ravine. Moving awkwardly because of the clenched stiffness of his muscles, Covenant followed Lena up the ravine, then stepped gingerly behind her down a rough-hewn stair in the side of a sharp cut which branched away into the mountain. When they reached the bottom of the cut, they continued along it, negotiating its scree-littered floor while the slash of sky overhead narrowed and the sides of the cut leaned together. A rich, damp smell surrounded them, and the cool shadows deepened until Lena's dark tunic became dim in the gloom ahead of Covenant. Then the cut turned sharply to the left and opened without warning into a small, sun-bright valley with a stream sparkling through the center and tall pines standing over the grass around the edges.
"Here," said Lena with a happy smile. "What could heal you more than this?"
Covenant stopped to gaze, entranced, down the length of the valley. It was no more than fifty yards long, and at its far end the stream turned left again and filed away between two sheer walls. In this tiny pocket in the vastness of the mountain, removed from the overwhelming landscapes below Kevin's Watch, the earth was comfortably green and sunny, and the air was both fresh and warm-pine-aromatic, redolent with springtime. As he breathed the atmosphere of the place, Covenant felt his chest ache with a familiar grief at his own sickness.
To ease the pressure in his chest, he moved forward The grass under his feet was so thick and springy that he could feel it through the strained ligaments of his knees and calves. It seemed to encourage him toward the stream, toward the cleansing of his hurts.
The water was sure to be cold, but that did not concern him. His hands were too numb to notice cold very quickly. Squatting on a flat stone beside the stream, he plunged them into the current and began rubbing them together. His wrists felt the chill at once, but his fingers were vague about the water; and it gave him no pain to scrub roughly at his cuts and scrapes.
He was marginally aware that Lena had moved away from him up the stream, apparently looking for something, but he was too preoccupied to wonder what she was doing. After an intense scrubbing he let his hands rest, and rolled up his sleeves to inspect his elbows. They were red and sore, but the skin was not broken.
When he pulled up his pant legs, he found that his shins and knees were more battered. The discoloration of his bruises was already darkening, and would be practically black before long; but the tough fabric of his trousers had held, and again the skin was unbroken. In their way, bruises were as dangerous to him as cuts, but he could not treat them without medication. He made an effort to stifle his anxiety, and turned his attention back to his hands.
Blood still oozed from the heels and fingertips, and when he washed it off he could see bits of black grit lodged deep in some of the cuts. But before he started washing again, Lena returned. Her cupped hands were full of thick brown mud. "This is hurtloam," she said reverently, as if she were speaking of something rare and powerful. "You must put it on all your wounds."
"Mud?" His leper's caution quivered. "I need soap, not more dirt."
"This is hurtloam," repeated Lena. "It is for healing." She stepped closer and thrust the mud toward him. He thought he could see tiny gleams of gold in it.
He stared at it blankly, shocked by the idea of putting mud in his cuts.
"You must use it," she insisted. "I know what it is. Do you not understand? This is hurtloam. Listen. My father is Trell, Gravelingas of the rhadhamaerl.
His work is with the fire-stones, and he leaves healing to the Healers. But he is a rhadhamaerl. He comprehends the rocks and soils. And he taught me to care for myself when there is need. He taught me the signs and places of hurtloam. This is healing earth. You must use it."
Mud? He glared. In my cuts? Do you want to cripple me?
Before he could stop her, Lena knelt in front of him and dropped a handful of the mud onto his bare knee. With that hand free, she spread the brown loam down his shin. Then she scooped up the remainder and put it on his other knee and shin. As it lay on his legs, its golden gleaming seemed to grow stronger, brighter.
The wet earth was cool and soothing, and it seemed to stroke his legs tenderly, absorbing the pain from his bruises. He watched it closely. The relief that it sent flowing through his bones gave him a pleasure that he had never felt before. Bemused, he opened his hands to Lena, let her spread hurtloam over all his cuts and scrapes.
At once, the relief began to run up into him through his elbows and wrists. And an odd tingling started in his palms, as if the hurtloam were venturing past his cuts into his nerves, trying to reawaken them. A similar tingling danced across the arches of his feet. He stared at the glittering mud with a kind of awe in his eyes.
It dried quickly; its light vanished into the brown. In a few moments Lena rubbed it off his legs. Then he saw that his bruises were almost gone-they were in the last, faded yellow stages of healing. He slapped his hands into the stream, washed away the mud, looked at his fingers. They had become whole again. The heels of his hands were healed as well, and the abrasions on his forearms had disappeared completely. He was so stunned that for a moment he could only gape at his hands and think, Hellfire. Hellfire and bloody damnation. What's happening to me?
After a long silence, he whispered, "That's not possible."
In response, Lena grinned broadly.
"What's so funny?"
Trying to imitate his tone, she said, " `I need soap, not more dirt."' Then she laughed, a teasing sparkle in her eyes.
But Covenant was too full of surprise to be distracted. "I'm serious. How can this happen?"
Lena dropped her eyes and answered quietly, "There is power in the Earth-power and life. You must know this. Atiaran my mother says that such things as hurtloam, such powers and mysteries, are in all the Earth-but we are blind to them because we do not share enough, with the Land and with each other."
"There are-other things like this?"
"Many. But I know only a few. If you travel to the Council, it may be that the Lords will teach you everything. But come"-she swung lightly to her feet "here is another. Are you hungry?"
As if cued by her question, an impression of emptiness opened in his stomach. How long had it been since he had eaten? He adjusted his pant legs, rolled down his sleeves, and shrugged himself to his feet. His wonder was reinforced to find that almost every ache was gone from his muscles. Shaking his head in disbelief, he followed Lena toward one side of the valley.
Under the shade of the trees, she stopped beside a gnarled, waist-high shrub. Its leaves were spread and pointed like a holly's, but it was scattered with small viridian blooms, and nestled under some of the leaves were tight clusters of a blue-green fruit the size of blueberries.
"This is aliantha," said Lena. "We call them treasure-berries." Breaking off a cluster, she ate four or five berries, then dropped the seeds into her hand and threw them behind her. "It is said that a person can walk the whole length and breadth of the Land eating only. treasure-berries, and return home stronger and better fed than before. They are a great gift of the Earth. They bloom and bear fruit in all seasons. There is no part of the Land in which they do not grow except, perhaps, in the east, on the Spoiled Plains. And they are the hardiest of growing things the last to die and the first to grow again. All this my mother told me, as part of the lore of our people. Eat," she said, handing Covenant a cluster of the berries, "eat, and spread the seeds over the Earth, so that the aliantha may flourish."
But Covenant made no move to take the fruit. He was lost in wonder, in unanswerable questions about the strange potency of this Land. For the moment, he neglected his danger.
Lena regarded his unfocused gaze, then took one of the berries and put it in his mouth. By reflex, he broke the skin with his teeth; at once, his mouth was filled with a light, sweet taste like that of a ripe peach faintly blended with salt and lime. In another moment he was eating greedily, only occasionally remembering to spit out the seeds.
He ate until he could find no more fruit on that bush, then looked about him for another. But Lena put her hand on his arm to stop him. "Treasureberries are strong food," she said. "You do not need many. And the taste is better if you eat slowly."
But Covenant was still hungry. He could not remember ever wanting food as much as he now wanted that fruit-the sensations of eating had never been so vivid, so compulsory. He snatched his arm away as if he meant to strike her, then abruptly caught himself.
What is this? What's happening?
Before he could pursue the question, he became aware of another feeling -overpowering drowsiness. In the space of one instant, he passed almost without transition from hunger to a huge yawn that made him seem top-heavy with weariness. He tried to turn, and stumbled.
Lena was saying, "The hurtloam does this, but I did not expect it. When the wounds are very deadly, hurtloam brings sleep to speed the healing. But cuts on the hands are not deadly. Do you have hurts that you did not show me?"
Yes, he thought through another yawn. I'm sick to death.
He was asleep before he hit the grass.
When he began to drift slowly awake, the first thing that he became conscious of was Lena's firm thighs pillowing his head. Gradually, he grew aware of other things-the tree shade bedizened with glints of declining sunlight, the aroma of pine, the wind murmuring, the grass thickly cradling his body, the sound of a tune, the irregular tingling that came and went from his palms like an atavism-but the warmth of his cheek on Lena's lap seemed more important. For the time, his sole desire was to clasp Lena in his arms and bury his face in her thighs. He resisted it by listening to her song.
In a soft and somehow naive tone, she sang:
Something there is in beauty
which grows in the soul of the beholder
like a flower:
fragile-
for many are the blights
which may waste
the beauty
or the beholder-
and imperishable-
for the beauty may die,
or the beholder may die,
or the world may die,
but the soul in which the flower grows survives.
Her voice folded him in a comfortable spell which he did not want to end. After a pause full of the scent of pine and the whispering breeze, he said softly, "I like that."
"Do you? I am glad. It was made by Tomal the Craftmaster, for the dance when he wed Imoiran Moiran-daughter. But oft-times the beauty of a song is in the singing, and I am no singer. It may be that tonight Atiaran my mother will sing for the Stonedown. Then you will hear a real song."
Covenant gave no answer. He lay still, only wishing to nestle in his pillow for as long as he could. The tingling in his palms seemed to urge him to embrace
Lena, and he lay still, enjoying the desire and wondering where he would find the courage.
Then she began to sing again. The tune sounded familiar, and behind it he heard the rumor of dark wings. Suddenly he realized that it was very much like the tune that went with "Golden Boy."
He had been walking down the sidewalk toward the offices of the phone company-the Bell Telephone Company; that name was written in gilt letters on the door-to pay his bill in person.
He jerked off Lena's lap, jumped to his-feet. A mist of violence dimmed his vision. "What song is that?" he demanded thickly. .
Startled, Lena answered, "No song. I was only trying to make a melody. Is it wrong?"
The tone of her voice steadied him-she sounded so abandoned, so made forlorn by his quick anger. Words failed him, and the mist passed. No business, he thought. I've got no business taking it out on her. Extending his hands, he helped her to her feet. He tried to smile, but his stiff face could only grimace. "Where do we go now?"
Slowly the hurt faded from her eyes. "You are strange, Thomas Covenant," she said.
Wryly, he replied, "I didn't know it was this bad."
For a moment, they stood gazing into each other's eyes. Then she surprised him by blushing and dropping his hands. There was a new excitement in her voice as she said, "We will go to the Stonedown. You will amaze my mother and father." Gaily, she turned and ran away down the valley.
She was lithe and light and graceful as she ran, and Covenant watched her, musing on the strange new feelings that moved in him. He had an unexpected sense that this Land might offer him some spell with which he could conjure away his impotence, some rebirth to which he could cling even after he regained consciousness, after the Land and all its insane implications faded into the miasma of half-remembered dreams. Such hope did not require that the Land be real, physically actual and independent of his own unconscious, uncontrolled dream-weaving. No, leprosy was an incurable disease, and if he did not die from his accident, he would have to live with that fact. But a dream might heal other afflictions. It might. He set off after Lena with a swing in his stride and eagerness in his veins.
The sun was down far enough in the sky to leave the lower half of the valley in shadow. Ahead of him, he could see Lena beckoning, and he followed the stream toward her, enjoying the spring of the turf under his feet as he walked. He felt somehow taller than before, as if the hurtloam had done more to him than simply heal his cuts and scrapes. Nearing Lena, he seemed to see parts of her for the first time-the delicacy of her ears when her hair swung behind them-the way the soft fabric of her shift hung on her breasts and hips-her slim waist. The sight of her made the tingling in his palms grow stronger.
She smiled at him, then led the way along the stream and out of the valley. They moved down a crooked file between sheer walls of rock which climbed above them until the narrow slit of the sky was hundreds of feet away. The trail was rocky, and Covenant had to watch his feet constantly to keep his balance. The effort made the file seem long, but within a couple hundred yards he and Lena came to a crevice that ascended to the right away from the stream. They climbed into and along the crevice. Soon it leveled, then sloped gradually downward for a long way, but it bent enough so that Covenant could not see where he was headed.
At last, the crevice took one more turn and ended, leaving Lena and Covenant on the mountainside high above the river valley. They were facing due west into the declining sun. The river came out of the mountains to their left, and flowed away into the plains on their right. There was a branch of the mountain range across the valley, but it soon shrank into the plains to the north.
"Here is the Mithil," said Lena. "And there is Mithil Stonedown." Covenant saw a tiny knot of huts north of him on the east side of the river. "It is not a great distance," Lena went on, "but the path travels up the
valley and then back along the river. The sun will be gone when we reach our Stonedown. Come."
Covenant had an uneasy moment looking down the slope of the mountain-still more than two thousand feet above the valley-but he mastered it, and followed Lena to the south. The mountainside relaxed steadily, and soon the path lay along grassy slopes and behind stern rock buttresses, through dells and ravines, among mazes of fallen boulders. And as the trail descended, the air became deeper, softer, and less crystalline. The smells slowly changed, grew greener; pine and aspen gave way to the loam of the grasslands. Covenant felt that he was alive to every gradation of the change, every nuance of the lowering altitude. Through the excitement of his new alertness, the descent passed quickly. Before he was ready to leave the mountains, the trail rolled down a long hill, found the river, and then swung north along it.
The Mithil was narrow and brisk where the path first joined it, and it spoke with wet rapidity to itself in a voice full of resonances and rumors. But as the river drew toward the plains, it broadened and slowed, became more philosophical in its low, selfcommuning mutter. Soon its voice no longer filled the air. Quietly it told itself its long tale as it rolled away on its quest for the sea.
Under the spell of the river, Covenant became slowly more conscious of the reassuring solidity of the Land. It was not an intangible dreamscape; it was concrete, susceptible to ascertainment. This was an illusion, of course-a trick of his wracked and smitten mind. But it was curiously comforting. It seemed to promise that he was not walking into horror, chaos that this Land was coherent, manageable, that when he had mastered its laws, its peculiar facts, he would be able to travel unscathed the path of his dream, retain his grip on his sanity. Such thoughts made him feel almost bold as he followed Lena's lithe back, the swaying appeal of her hips:
While Covenant wandered in unfamiliar emotions, the Mithil valley dropped into shadow. The sun crossed behind the western mountains, and though light still glowed on the distant plains, a thin veil of darkness thickened in the valley. As he watched, the rim of the shadow stretched itself high up the mountain on his right, climbing like a hungry tide the shores of day. In the twilight, he sensed his peril sneaking furtively closer to him, though he did not know what it was.
Then the last ridge of the mountains fell into dusk, and the glow on the plains began to fade.
Lena stopped, touched Covenant's arm, pointed. "See," she said, "here is Mithil Stonedown."
They stood atop a long, slow hill, and at its bottom were gathered the buildings of the village. Covenant could see the houses quite clearly, although lights already shone faintly behind some of the windows. Except for a large, open circle in the center of the village, the Stonedown looked as erratically laid out as if it had fallen off the mountain not long ago. But this impression was belied by the smooth sheen of the stone walls and the fiat roofs. And when he looked more closely, Covenant saw that the Stonedown was not in fact unorganized. All the buildings faced in toward the center.
None of them had more than one story, and all were stone, with fiat slabs of rock for roofs; but they varied considerably in size and shape-some were round, others square or rectangular, and still others so irregular from top to bottom that they seemed more like squat hollow boulders than buildings.
As she and Covenant started down toward the Stonedown, Lena said, "Five times a hundred people of the South Plains live here-rhadhamaerl, Shepherds, Cattleherds, Farmers, and those who Craft. But Atiaran my mother alone has been to the Loresraat." Pointing, she added, "The home of my family is there-nearest the river."
Walking together, she and Covenant skirted the Stonedown toward her home.

Six: Legend of Berek Halfhand


DUSK was deepening over the valley. Birds gathered to rest for the night in the trees of the foothills. They sang and called energetically to each other for a while, but their high din soon relaxed into a quiet, satisfied murmur. As Lena and Covenant passed behind the outer houses of the Stonedown, they could again hear the river contemplating itself in the distance. Lena was silent, as if she were containing some excitement or agitation, and Covenant was too immersed in the twilit sounds around him to say anything. The swelling night seemed full of soft communions-anodynes for the loneliness of the dark. So they came quietly toward Lena's home.
It was a rectangular building, larger than most in the Stonedown, but with the same polished sheen on the walls. A warm yellow light radiated from the windows. As Lena and Covenant approached, a large figure crossed one of the windows and moved toward a farther room.
At the corner of the house, Lena paused to take Covenant's hand and squeezed it before she led him up to the doorway.
The entry was covered with a heavy curtain. She held it aside and drew him into the house. There she halted. Looking around swiftly, he observed that the room they had entered went the depth of the house, but it had two curtained doors in either wall. In it, a stone table and benches with enough space to seat six or eight people occupied the middle of the floor. But the room was large enough so that the table did not dominate it.
Cut into the rock walls all around the room were shelves, and these were full of stoneware jars and utensils, some obviously for use in cooking and eating, others with functions which Covenant could not guess. Several rock stools stood against the walls. And the warm yellow light filled the chamber, glowing on the smooth surfaces and reflecting off rare colors and textures in the stone.
The light came from fires in several stone pots, one in each corner of the room and one in the center of the table; but there was no flicker of flames-the light was as steady as its stone containers. And with the light came a soft smell as of newly broken earth.
After only a cursory glance around the chamber; Covenant's attention was drawn to the far end of the room. There on a slab of stone against the wall sat a huge granite pot, half as tall as a man. And over the pot, peering intently at its contents, stood a large man, a great pillar of a figure, as solid as a boulder. He had his back to Lena and Covenant, and did not seem to be aware of them. He wore a short brown tunic with brown trousers under it, but the leaf pattern woven into the fabric at his shoulders was identical to Lena's. Under the tunic, his massive muscles bunched and stretched as he rotated the pot. It looked prodigiously heavy, but Covenant half expected the man to lift it over his head to pour out its contents.
There was a shadow over the pot which the brightness of the room did not penetrate, and for some time the man stared into the darkness, studying it while he rotated the pot. Then he began to sing. His voice was too low for Covenant to make out the words, but as he listened he felt a kind of invocation in the sound, as if the contents of the pot were powerful. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the shadow began to pale. At first, Covenant thought that the light in the room had changed, but soon be saw a new illumination starting from the pot. The glow swelled and deepened, and at last shone out strongly, making the other lights seem thin.
With a final mutter over his work, the man stood upright and turned around. In the new brightness, he seemed even taller and broader than before, as if his limbs and shoulders and deep chest drew strength, stature, from the light; and his forehead was ruddy from the heat of the pot. Seeing Covenant, he started in surprise. An uneasy look came into his eyes, and his right hand touched his thick reddish beard. Then he extended the hand, palm forward, toward Covenant, and said to Lena, "Well, daughter, you bring a guest. But I remember that our hospitality is in your charge today." The strange potency of a moment before was gone from his voice. He sounded like a man who did not speak much with people. But though he was treating his daughter sternly, he seemed essentially calm. "You know I promised more graveling today, and Atiaran your mother is helping deliver the new child of Odona Murrin-mate. The guest will be offended by our hospitality-with no meal ready to welcome the end of his day." Yet while he reprimanded Lena, his eyes studied Covenant cautiously.
Lena bowed her head, trying, Covenant felt sure, to look ashamed for her father's benefit. But a moment later she hurried across the room and hugged the big man. He smiled softly at her upturned face. Then, turning toward Covenant, she announced, "Trell my father, I bring a stranger to the Stonedown. I found him on Kevin's Watch." A lively gleam shone in her eyes, although she tried to keep her voice formal.
"So," Trell responded. "A stranger-that I see. And wonder what business took him to that ill-blown place."
"He fought with a gray cloud," answered Lena.
Looking at this bluff, hale man, whose muscle knotted arm rested with such firm gentleness on Lena's shoulder, Covenant expected him to laugh at the absurd suggestion-a man fighting a cloud. Trell's presence felt imperturbable and earthy, like an assertion of common sense that reduced the nightmare of Foul to its proper unreality. So Covenant was put off his balance by hearing Trell ask with perfect seriousness, "Which was the victor?"
The question forced Covenant to find a new footing for himself. He was not prepared to deal with the memory of Lord Foul-but at the same time he felt obscurely sure that he could not lie to Trell. He found that his throat had gone dry, and he answered awkwardly, "I lived through it."
Trell said nothing for a moment, but in the silence Covenant felt that his answer had increased the big man's uneasiness. Trell's eyes shifted away, then came back as he said, "I see. And what is your name, stranger?"
Promptly, Lena smiled at Covenant and answered for him, "Thomas Covenant. Covenant of Kevin's Watch."
"What, girl?" asked Trell. "Are you a prophet, that you speak for someone higher than you?" Then to Covenant he said, "Well, Thomas Covenant of Kevin's Watch-do you have other names?"
Covenant was about to respond negatively when he caught an eager interest in the question from Lena's eyes. He paused. In a leap of insight, he realized that he was as exciting to her as if he had in fact been Berek Halfhand-that to her yearning toward mysteries and powers, all-knowing Lords and battles in the clouds, his strangeness and his unexplained appearance on the Watch made him seem like a personification of great events out of a heroic past. The message of her gaze was suddenly plain; in the suspense of her curiosity she was hanging from the hope that he would reveal himself to her, give her some glimpse of his high calling to appease her for her youth and ignorance.
The idea filled him with strange reverberations. He was not used to such flattery; it gave him an unfamiliar sense of possibility. Quickly, he searched for some high-sounding title to give himself, some name by which he could please Lena without falsifying himself to Trell. Then he had an inspiration. "Thomas Covenant," he said as if he were rising to a challenge, "the Unbeliever."
Immediately, he felt that with that name he had committed himself to more than he could measure at present. The act made him feel pretentious, but Lena rewarded him with a beaming glance, and Trell accepted the statement gravely. "Well, Thomas Covenant," he replied, "you are welcome to Mithil Stonedown. Please accept the hospitality of this home. I must go now to take my graveling as I promised. It may be that Atiaran my wife will return soon. And if you prod her, Lena may remember to offer you refreshment while I am gone."
While he spoke, Trell turned back to his stone pot. He wrapped his arms about it, lifted it from its base. With red-gold flames reflecting a dance in his hair and beard, he carried the pot toward the doorway. Lena hurried ahead of him to hold open the curtain, and in a moment Trell was gone, leaving Covenant with one glimpse of the contents of the pot. It was full of small, round stones like fine gravel, and they seemed to be on fire.
"Damnation," Covenant whispered. "How heavy is that thing?"
"Three men cannot lift the pot alone," replied Lena proudly. "But when the graveling burns, my father may lift it easily. He is a Gravelingas of the rhadhamaerl, deep with the lore of stone."
Covenant stared after him for a moment, appalled by Trell's strength.
Then Lena said, "Now, I must not fail to offer you refreshment. Will you wash or bathe? Are you thirsty? We have good springwine."
Her voice brought back the scintillation of Covenant's nerves. His instinctive distrust of Trell's might dissipated under the realization that he had a power of his own. This world accepted him; it accorded him importance. People like Trell and Lena were prepared to take him as seriously as he wanted. All he had to do was keep moving, follow the path of his dream to Revelstone-whatever that was. He felt giddy at the prospect. On the impetus of the moment, he determined to participate in his own importance,. enjoy it while it lasted.
To cover his rush of new emotions, he told Lena that he would like to wash. She took him past a curtain into another room, where water poured continuously from a spout in the wall. A sliding stone valve sent the water into either a washbasin or a large tub, both formed of stone. Lena showed him some fine sand to use as soap, then left him. The water was cold, but he plunged his hands and head into it with something approaching enthusiasm.
When he was done, he looked around for a towel, but did not see one. Experimentally, he eased a hand over the glowing pot that lit the room. The warm yellow light dried his fingers rapidly, so he leaned over the pot, rubbing the water from his face and neck, and soon even his hair was dry. By force of habit, he went through his VSE, examining the nearly invisible marks where his hands had been cut. Then he pushed the curtain out of his way and reentered the central chamber.
He found that another woman had joined Lena. As he returned, he heard Lena say, "He says he knows nothing of us." Then the other woman looked at him, and he guessed immediately that she was Atiaran. The leaf pattern at the shoulders of her long brown robe seemed to be a kind of family emblem; he did not need such hints to see the long familiarity in the way the older woman touched Lena's shoulder, or the similarities in their posture. But where Lena was fresh and slim of line, full of unbroken newness, Atiaran appeared complex, almost self-contradictory. Her soft surface, her full figure, she carried as if it were a hindrance to the hard strength of experience within her, as if she lived with her body on the basis of an old and difficult truce. And her face bore the signs of that truce; her forehead seemed prematurely lined, and her deep spacious eyes appeared to open inward on a weary battleground of doubts and uneasy reconciliations. Looking at her over the stone table, Covenant received a double impression of a frowning concern-the result of knowing and fearing more than other people realized-and an absent beauty that would rekindle her face if only she would smile.
After a brief hesitation, the older woman touched her heart and raised her hand toward Covenant as Trell had done. "Hail, guest, and welcome. I am Atiaran Trell-mate. I have spoken with Trell, and with Lena my daughter-you need no introduction to me, Thomas Covenant. Be comfortable in our home."
Remembering his manners-and his new determination-Covenant responded, "I'm honored."
Atiaran bowed slightly. "Accepting that which is offered honors the giver. And courtesy is always welcome." Then she seemed to hesitate again, uncertain of how to proceed. Covenant watched the return of old conflicts to her eyes, thinking that gaze would have an extraordinary power if it were not- so inward. But she reached her decision soon, and said, "It is not the custom of our people to worry a guest with hard questions before eating. But the food is not ready "she glanced at Lena-" and you are strange to me, Thomas Covenant, strange and disquieting. I would talk with you if I may, while Lena prepares what food we have. You seem to bear a need that should not wait."
Covenant shrugged noncommittally. He felt a twinge of anxiety at the thought of her questions, and braced himself to try to answer them without losing his new balance.
In the pause, Lena began moving around the room. She went to the shelves to get plates and bowls for the table, and prepared some dishes on a slab of stone heated from underneath by a tray of graveling. She turned her eyes toward Covenant often as she moved, but he did not always notice. Atiaran compelled his attention.
At first, she murmured uncertainly, "I hardly know where to begin. It has been so long, and I learned so little of what the Lords know. But what I have must be enough. No one here can take my place." She straightened her shoulders. "May I see your hands?"
Remembering Lena's initial reaction to him, Covenant held up his right hand.
Atiaran moved around the table until she was close enough to touch him, but did not. Instead, she searched his face. "Halfhand. It is as Trell said. And some say that Berek Earthfriend, Heartthew and Lord
Fatherer, will return to the Land when there is need. Do you know these things?"
Covenant answered gruffly, "No."
Still looking into his face, Atiaran said, "Your other hand?"
Puzzled, he raised his left. She dropped her eyes to it.
When she saw it, she gasped, and bit her lip and stepped back. For an instant, she seemed inexplicably terrified. But she mastered herself, and asked with only a low tremble in her voice, "What metal is that ring?"
"What? This?" Her reaction startled Covenant, and in his surprise he gaped at a complicated memory of Joan saying, With this ring 1 thee wed, and the old ocher-robed beggar replying, Be true, be true. Darkness threatened him. He heard himself answer as if he were someone else, someone who had nothing to do with leprosy and divorce, "It's white gold."
Atiaran groaned, clamped her hands over her temples as if she were in pain. But again she brought herself under control, and a bleak courage came into her eyes. "I alone," she said, "I alone in Mithil Stonedown know the meaning of this. Even Trell has not this knowledge. And I know too little. Answer, Thomas Covenant-is it true?"
I should've thrown it away, he muttered bitterly. A leper's got no right to be sentimental.
But Atiaran's intensity drew his attention toward her again. She gave him the impression that she knew more about what was happening to him than he did that he was moving into a world which, in some dim, ominous way, had been made ready for him. His old anger mounted. "Of course it's true," he snapped. "What's the matter with you? It's only a ring."
"It is white gold." Atiaran's reply sounded as forlorn as if she had just suffered a bereavement.
"So what?" He could not understand what distressed the woman. "It doesn't mean a thing. Joan-" Joan had preferred it to yellow gold. But that had not prevented her from divorcing him.
"It is white gold," Atiaran repeated. "The Lords
sing an ancient lore-song concerning the bearer of white gold. I remember only a part of it, thus:

And he who wields white wild magic gold
is a paradox-
for he is everything and nothing,
hero and fool,
potent, helpless-
and with the one word of truth or treachery,
he will save or damn the Earth
because he is mad and sane,
cold and passionate,
lost and found.

Do you know the song, Covenant? There is no white gold in the Land. Gold has never been found in the Earth, though it is said that Berek knew of it, and made the songs. You come from another place. What terrible purpose brings you here?"
Covenant felt her searching him with her eyes for some flaw, some falsehood which would give the lie to her fear. He stiffened. You have might, the Despiser had said, wild magic- You will never know what it is. The idea that his wedding band was some kind of talisman nauseated him like the smell of attar. He had a savage desire to shout. None of this is happening! But he only knew of one workable response: don't think about it, follow the path, survive. He met Atiaran on her own ground. "All purposes are terrible. I have a message for the Council of Lords."
"What message?" she demanded.
After only an instant's hesitation, he grated, "The Gray Slayer has come back."
When she heard Covenant pronounce that name, Lena dropped the stoneware bowl she was carrying, and fled into her mother's arms.
Covenant stood glowering at the shattered bowl. The liquid it had contained gleamed on the smooth stone floor. Then he heard Atiaran pant in horror, "How do you know this?" He looked back at her, and saw the two women clinging together like children threatened by the demon of their worst dreams. Leper outcast unclean! he thought sourly. But as he watched, Atiaran seemed to grow solider. Her jaw squared, her broad glance hardened. For all her fear, she was a strong woman comforting her child-and bracing herself to meet her danger. Again she asked, "How do you know?"
She made him feel defensive, and he replied, "I met him on Kevin's Watch."
"Ali, alas!" she cried, hugging Lena. "Alas for the young in this world! The doom of the Land is upon them. Generations will die in agony, and there will be war and terror and pain for those who live! Alas, Lena my daughter. You were born into an evil time, and there will be no peace or comfort for you when the battle comes. Ali, Lena, Lena."
Her grief touched an undefended spot in Covenant, and his throat thickened. Her voice filled his own image of the Land's Desolation with a threnody he had not heard before. For the first time, he sensed that the Land held something precious which was in danger of being lost.
This combination of sympathy and anger tightened his nerves still further. He vibrated to a sharper pitch, trembled. When he looked at Lena, he saw that a new awe of him had already risen above her panic. The unconscious offer in her eyes burned more disturbingly than ever.
He held himself still until Atiaran and Lena slowly released each other. Then he asked, "What do you know about all this? About what's happening to me?"
Before Atiaran could reply, a voice called from outside the house, "Hail! Atiaran Tiaran-daughter. Trell Gravelingas tells us that your work is done for this day. Come and sing to the Stonedown!"
For a moment, Atiaran stood still, shrinking back into herself. Then she sighed, "Ali, the work of my life has just begun," and turned to the door. Holding aside the curtain, she said into the night, "We have not yet eaten. I will come later. But after the gathering I must speak with the Circle of elders."
"They will be told," the voice answered.
"Good," said Atiaran. But instead of returning to Covenant, she remained in the doorway, staring into the darkness for a while. When she closed the curtain at last and faced Covenant, her eyes were moist, and they held a look that he at first thought was defeat. But then he realized that she was only remembering defeat. "No, Thomas Covenant," she said sadly, "I know nothing of your fate. Perhaps if I had remained at the Loresraat longer-if I had had the strength. But I passed my limit there, and came home. I know a part of the old Lore that Mithil Stonedown does not guess, but it is too little. All that I can remember for you are hints of a wild magic which destroys peace
wild magic graven in every rock, contained for white gold to unleash or control but the meaning of such lines, or the courses of these times, I do not know. That is a double reason to take you to the Council." Then she looked squarely into his face, and added, "I tell you openly, Thomas Covenant-if you have come to betray the Land, only the Lords may hope to stop you."
Betray? This was another new thought. An instant passed before he realized what Atiaran was suggesting. But before he could protest, Lena put in for him, "Mother! He fought a gray cloud on Kevin's Watch. I saw it. How can you doubt him?" Her defense controlled his belligerent reaction. Without intending to, she had put him on false ground. He had not gone so far as to fight Lord Foul.
Trell's return stopped any reply Atiaran might have made. The big man stood in the doorway for a moment, looking between Atiaran and Lena and Covenant. Abruptly, he said, "So. We are come on hard times."
"Yes, Trell my husband," murmured Atiaran. "Hard times."
Then his eyes caught the shards of stoneware on the floor. "Hard times, indeed," he chided gently, "when stoneware is broken, and the pieces left to powder underfoot."
This time, Lena was genuinely ashamed. "I am sorry, Father," she said. "I was afraid."
"No matter." Trell went to her and placed his big hands, light with affection, on her shoulders. "Some wounds may be healed. I feel strong today."
At this, Atiaran gazed gratefully at Trell as if he had just undertaken some heroic task.
To Covenant's incomprehension, she said, "Be seated, guest. Food will be ready soon. Come, Lena." The two of them began to bustle around the cooking stone.
Covenant watched as Trell started to pick up the pieces of the broken pot. The Gravelingas' voice rumbled softly, singing an ancient subterranean song. Tenderly, he carried the shards to the table and set them down near the lamp. Then he seated himself. Covenant sat beside him, wondering what was about to happen.
Singing his cavernous song between clenched teeth, Trell began to fit the shards together as if the pot were a puzzle. Piece after piece he set in place, and each piece held where he left it without any adhesive Covenant could see. Trell moved painstakingly, his touch delicate on every fragment, but the pot seemed to grow quickly in his hands, and the pieces fit together perfectly, leaving only a network of fine black lines to mark the breaks. Soon all the shards were in place.
Then his deep tone took on a new cadence. He began to stroke the stoneware with his fingers, and everywhere his touch passed, the black fracturemarks vanished as if they had been erased. Slowly, he covered every inch of the pot with his caress. When he had completed the outside, he stroked the inner surface. And finally he lifted the pot, spread his touch over its base. Holding the pot between the fingers of both hands, he rotated it carefully, making sure he had missed nothing. Then he stopped singing, set the pot down gently, took his hands away. It was as complete and solid as if it had never been dropped.
Covenant pulled his awed stare away from the pot to Trell's face. The Gravelingas looked haggard with strain, and his taut cheeks were streaked with tears. "Mending is harder than breaking," he mumbled. "I could not do this every day." Wearily, he folded his arms on the table and cradled his head in them.
Atiaran stood behind her husband, massaging the heavy muscles of his shoulders and neck, and her eyes were full of pride and love. Something in her expression made Covenant feel that he came from a very poor world, where no one knew or cared about healing stoneware pots. He tried to tell himself that he was dreaming, but he did not want to listen.
After a silent pause full of respect for Trell's deed, Lena started to set the table. Soon Atiaran brought bowls of food from the cooking stone. When everything was ready, Trell lifted his head, climbed tiredly to his feet. With Atiaran and Lena, he stood beside the table. Atiaran said to Covenant, "It is the custom of our people to stand before eating, as a sign of our respect for the Earth, from which life and food and power come." Covenant stood as well, feeling awkward and out of place. Trell and Atiaran and Lena closed their eyes, bowed their heads for a moment. Then they sat down. When Covenant had followed them to the bench, they began to pass around the food.
It was a bountiful meal: there was cold salt beef covered with a steaming gravy, wild rice, dried apples, brown bread, and cheese; and Covenant was given a tall mug of a drink which Lena called springwine. This beverage was as clear and light as water, slightly effervescent, and it smelled dimly of aliantha; but it tasted like a fine beer which had been cured of all bitterness. Covenant had downed a fair amount of it before he realized that it added a still keener vibration to his already thrumming nerves. He could feel himself tightening. He was too
full of unusual pressures. Soon he was impatient for the end of the meal, impatient to leave the house and expand in the night air.
But Lena's family ate slowly, and a pall hung over them. They dined as deliberately as if this meal marked the end of all their happiness together. In the silence, Covenant realized that this was a result of his presence. It made him uneasy.
To ease himself, he tried to increase what he knew about his situation. "I have a question," he said stiffly. With a gesture, he took in the whole Stonedown. "No wood. There's plenty of trees all over this valley, but I don't see you using any wood. Are the trees sacred or something?"
After a moment, Atiaran replied, "Sacred? I know that word, but its meaning is obscure to me. There is Power in the Earth, in trees and rivers and soil and stone, and we respect it for the life it gives. So we have sworn the Oath of Peace. Is that what you ask? We do not use wood because the wood-lore, the lillianrill, is lost to us, and we have not sought to regain it. In the exile of our people, when Desolation was upon the Land, many precious things were lost. Our people clung to the rhadhamaerl lore in the Southron Range and the Wastes, and it enabled us to endure. The wood-lore seemed not to help us, and it was forgotten. Now that we have returned to the Land, the stone-lore suffices for us. But others have kept the lillianrill. I have seen Soaring Woodhelven, in the hills far north and east of us, and it is a fair place-their people understand wood, and flourish. There is some trade between Stonedown and Woodhelven, but wood and stone are not traded."
When she stopped, Covenant sensed a difference in the new silence. A moment passed before he was sure that he could hear a distant rumor of voices. Shortly, Atiaran confirmed this by saying to Trell, "Ali, the gathering. I promised to sing tonight."
She and Trell stood together, and he said, "So. And then you will speak with the Circle of elders. Some preparations for tomorrow I will make. "See" he pointed at the table-"it will be a fine day -there is no shadow on the heart of the stone."
Almost in spite of himself, Covenant looked where Trell pointed. But he could see nothing.
Noticing his blank look, Atiaran said kindly, "Do not be surprised, Thomas Covenant. No one but a rhadhamaerl can foretell weather in such stones as this. Now come with me, if you will, and I will sing the legend of Berek Halfhand." As she spoke, she took the pot of graveling from the table to carry with her. "Lena, will you clean the stoneware?"
Covenant, got to his feet. Glancing at Lena, he saw her face twisted with unhappy obedience; she clearly wanted to go with them. But Trell also saw her expression and said, "Accompany our guest, Lena my daughter. I will not be too busy to care for the stoneware."
Pleasure transformed her instantly, and she leaped up to throw her arms around her father's neck. He returned her embrace for a moment, then lowered her to the floor. She straightened her shift, trying to look suddenly demure, and moved to her mother's side.
Atiaran said, "Trell, you will teach this girl to think she is a queen." But she took Lena's hand to show that she was not angry, and together they went past the curtain. Covenant followed promptly, went out of the house into the starry night with a sense of release. There was more room for him to explore himself under the open sky.
He needed exploration. He could not understand, rationalize, his mounting excitement. The springwine he had consumed seemed to provide a focus for his energies; it capered in his veins like a raving satyr. He felt inexplicably brutalized by inspiration, as if he were the victim rather than the source of his dream. White gold! he sputtered at the darkness between the houses. Wild magic! Do they think I'm crazy?
Perhaps he was crazy. Perhaps he was at this moment wandering in dementia, tormenting himself with false griefs and demands, the impositions of an illusion. Such things had happened to lepers.
I'm not! he shouted, almost cried out aloud. I know the difference-I know I'm dreaming.
His fingers twitched with violence, but he drew cool air deep into his lungs, put everything behind him. He knew how to survive a dream. Madness was the only danger.
As they walked together between the houses, Lena's smooth arm brushed his. His skin felt lambent at the touch.
The murmur of people grew quickly louder. Soon Lena, Atiaran, and Covenant reached the circle, moved into the gathering of the Stonedown.
It was lit by dozens of hand-held graveling pots, and in the illumination Covenant could see clearly. Men, women, and children clustered the rim of the circle. Covenant guessed that virtually the entire Stonedown had come to hear Atiaran sing. Most of the people were shorter than he was-and considerably shorter than Trell-and they had dark hair, brown or black, again unlike Trell. But they were a stocky, broad-shouldered breed, and even the women and children gave an impression of physical strength; centuries of stone-work had shaped them to suit their labor. Covenant felt the same dim fear of them that he had of Trell. They seemed too strong, and he had nothing but his strangeness to protect him if they turned against him.
They were busy talking to each other, apparently waiting for Atiaran, and they gave no sign of noticing Covenant. Reluctant to call attention to himself, he hung back at the outer edges of the gathering. Lena stopped with him. Atiaran gave her the graveling pot, then moved away through the crowd toward the center of the circle.
After he had scanned the assembly, Covenant turned his attention to Lena. She stood by his right side, the top of her head just an inch or two higher than his shoulder, and she held the graveling pot at her waist with both hands, so that the light emphasized her breasts. She was clearly unconscious of the effect, but he felt it intensely, and his palms itched again with an eager and fearful desire to touch her.
As if she felt his thoughts, she looked up at him with a solemn softness in her face that made his heart lurch as if it were too big for his constraining ribs. Awkwardly, he took his eyes away, stared around the circle without seeing anything. When he glanced back at her, she seemed to be doing just what he had done-pretending to look elsewhere. He tightened his jaw and forced himself to wait for something to happen.
Soon the gathering became still. In the center of the open circle, Atiaran stood up on a low stone platform. She bowed her head to the gathering, and the people responded by silently raising their graveling pots. The lights seemed to focus around her like a penumbra.
When the pots were lowered, and a last ripple of shuffling had passed through the gathering, Atiaran began: "I feel I am an old woman this night -my memory seems clouded, and I do not remember all the song I would like to sing. But what I remember I will sing, and I will tell you the story, as I have told it before, so that you may share what lore I have." At this, low laughter ran through the gathering-a humorous tribute to Atiaran's superior knowledge. She remained silent, her head bowed to hide the fear that knowledge had brought her, until the people were quiet again. Then she raised her eyes and said, "I will sing the legend of Berek Halfhand."
After a last momentary pause, she placed her song into the welcoming silence like a rough and rare jewel.
In war men pass like shadows that stain the grass,
Leaving their lives upon the green:
While Earth bewails the crimson sheen,
Men's dreams and stars and whispers all helpless pass.
In one red shadow by woe and wicked cast,
In one red pool about his feet,
Derek mows the vile like ripe wheat,
Though of all of Beauty's guarders he is last:
Last to pass into the shadow of defeat,  And last to feel the full despair,  And leave his weapons lying there
Take his half unhanded hand from battle seat.
Across the plains of the Land they all swept Treachers lust at faltering stride  As Berek fled before the tide,
Till on Mount Thunder's rock-mantled side he wept.
Berek! Earthfriend!-Help and weal,
Battle-aid against the foe! Earth gives and answers Power's peal, Ringing, Earthfriend! Help and heal!
Clean the Land from bloody death and woe!
The song made Covenant quiver, as if it concealed a specter which he should have been able to recognize. But Atiaran's voice enthralled him. No instruments aided her singing, but before she had finished her first line, he knew that she did not need them. The clean thread of her melody was tapestried with unexpected resonances, implied harmonies, echoes of silent voices, so that on every rising motif she seemed about to expand into three or four singers, throats separate and unanimous in the song.
It began in a minor mode that made the gold-hued, star-gemmed night throb like a dirge; and through it blew a black wind of loss, in which things cherished and consecrated throughout the Stonedown seemed to flicker and go out. As he listened, Covenant felt that the entire gathering wept with the song, cried out as one in silent woe under the wide power of the singer.
But grief did not remain long in that voice. After a pause that opened in the night like a revelation, Atiaran broke into her brave refrain-"Berek! Earthfriend!'--and the change carried her high in a major modulation that would have been too wrench
ing for any voice less rampant with suggestions, less thickly woven, than hers. The emotion of the gathering continued, but it was reborn in an instant from grief to joy and gratitude. And as Atiaran's long, last high note sprang from her throat like a salute to the mountains and the stars, the people held up their graveling pots and gave a resounding shout:
"Berek! Earthfriend! Hail!"
Then, slowly, they lowered their lights and began to press forward, moving closer to Atiaran to hear her story. The common impulse was so simple and strong that Covenant took a few steps as well before he could recollect himself. Abruptly, he looked about him-focused his eyes on the faint glimmering stars, smelled the pervasive, aroma of the graveling. The unanimous reaction of the Stonedown frightened him; he could not afford to lose himself in it. He wanted to turn away, but he needed to hear Berek's story, so he stayed where he was.
As soon as the people had settled themselves, Atiaran began.
"It came to pass that there was a great war in the eldest days, in the age that marks the beginning of the memory of mankind-before the Old Lords were born, before the Giants came across the Sunbirth Sea to make the alliance of Rockbrothers-a time before the Oath of Peace, before the Desolation and High Lord Kevin's last battle. It was a time when the Viles who sired the Demondim were a high and lofty race, and the Cavewights smithed and smelted beautiful metals to trade in open friendship with all the people of the Land. In that time, the Land was one great nation, and over it ruled a King and Queen. They were a hale pair, rich with love and honor, and for many years they held their sway in unison and peace.
"But after a time a shadow came over the heart of the King. He tasted the power of life and death over those who served him, and learned to desire it. Soon mastery became a lust with him, as necessary as food. His nights were spent in dark quests for more power, and by day he exercised that power, becoming hungrier and more cruel as the lust overcame him.
"But the Queen looked on her husband and was dismayed. She desired only that the health and fealty of the past years should return. But no appeal, no suasion or power of hers, could break the grip of cruelty that degraded the King. And at last, when she saw that the good of the Land would surely die if her husband were not halted, she broke with him, opposed his might with hers.
"Then there was war in the Land. Many who had felt the cut of the King's lash stood with the Queen. And many who hated murder and loved life joined her also. The chiefest of these was Berek-strongest and wisest of the Queen's champions. But the fear of the King was upon the Land, and whole cities rose up to fight for him, killing to protect their own slavery.
"Battle was joined across the Land, and for a time it seemed that the Queen would prevail. Her heroes were mighty of hand, and none were mightier than Berek, who was said to be a match for any King. But as the battle raged, a shadow, a gray cloud from the east, fell over the hosts. The Queen's defenders were stricken at heart, and their strength left them. But her enemies found a power of madness in the shadow. They forgot their humanity-they chopped and trampled and clawed and bit and maimed and defiled until their gray onslaught whelmed the heroes, and Berek's comrades broke one by one into despair and death. So the battle went until Berek was the last hater of the shadow left alive.
"But he fought on, heedless of his fate and the number of his foes, and souls fell dead under his sword like autumn leaves in a gale. At last, the King himself, filled with the fear and madness of the shadow, challenged Berek, and they fought. Berek stroked mightily, but the shadow turned his blade. So the contest was balanced until one blow of the King's ax cleft Berek's hand. Then Berek's sword fell to the ground, and he looked about him-looked and saw the shadow, and all his brave comrades dead. He
cried a great cry of despair, and, turning, fled the battleground.
"Thus he ran, hunted by death, and the memory of the shadow was upon him. For three days he ran, never stopping, never resting -and for three days the King's host came behind him like a murderous beast, panting for blood. At the last of his strength and the extremity of his despair, he came to Mount Thunder. Climbing the rock-strewn slope, he threw himself down atop a great boulder and wept, saying, `Alas for the Earth. We are overthrown, and have no friend to redeem us. Beauty shall pass utterly from the Land.'
"But the rock on which he lay replied, `There is a Friend for a heart with the wisdom to see it.'
" `The stones are not my friends,' cried Berek. `See, my enemies ride the Land, and no convulsion tears the earth from under their befouling feet.'
" `That may be,' said the rock. `They are alive as much as you, and need the ground to stand upon. Yet there is a Friend for you in the Earth, if you will pledge your soul to its healing.'
"Then Berek stood upon the rock, and beheld his enemies close upon him. He took the pledge, sealing it with the blood of his riven hand. The Earth replied with thunder; from the heights of the mountain came great stone Fire-Lions, devouring everything in their path. The King and all his host were laid waste, and Berek alone stood above the rampage on his boulder like a tall ship in the sea.
"When the rampage had passed, Berek did homage to the Lions of Mount Thunder, promising respect and communion and service for the Earth from himself and all the generations which followed him upon the Land. Wielding the first Earthpower, he made the Staff of Law from the wood of the One Tree, and with it began the healing of the Land. In the fullness of time, Berek Halfhand was given the name Heartthew, and he became the Lord-Fatherer, the first of the Old Lords. Those who followed his path flourished in the Land for two thousand years."
For a long moment, there was silence over the gathering when Atiaran finished. Then together, as if
their pulses moved to a single beat, the Stonedownors began to surge forward, stretching out their hands to touch her in appreciation. She spread her arms to hug as many of her friends as she could, and those who could not reach her embraced each other, sharing the oneness of their communal response.

Seven: Lena


ALONE in the night-alone because he could not share the spontaneous -embracing impulse of the Stonedown Covenant felt suddenly trapped, threatened. A pressure of darkness cramped his lungs; he could not seem to get enough air. A leper's claustrophobia was on him, a leper's fear of crowds, of unpredictable behavior. Berek! he panted with mordant intensity. These people wanted him to be a hero. With a stiff jerk of repudiation, he swung away from the gathering, went stalking in high dudgeon between the houses as if the Stonedownors had dealt him a mortal insult.
Berek! His chest heaved at the thought. Wild magic! It was ridiculous. Did not these people know he was a leper? Nothing could be less possible for him than the kind of heroism they saw in Berek Halfhand.
But Lord Foul had said, He intends you to be my final foe. He chose you to destroy me.
In stark dismay, he glimpsed the end toward which the path of the dream might be leading him; he saw himself drawn ineluctably into a confrontation with the Despiser.
He was trapped. Of course he could not play the hero in some dream war. He could not forget himself that much; forgetfulness was suicide. Yet he could not escape this dream without passing through it, could not return to reality without awakening. He knew what would happen to him if he stood still and tried to stay sane. Already, only this far from the lights of the gathering, he felt dark night beating toward him, circling on broad wings out of the sky at his head.
He lurched to a halt, stumbled to lean against a wall, caught his forehead in his hands.
I can't -he panted. All his hopes that this Land might conjure away his impotence, heal his sore heart somehow, fell into ashes.
Can't go on.
Can't stop.
What's happening to me?
Abruptly, he heard steps running toward him. He jumped erect, and saw Lena hurrying to join him. The swing of her graveling pot cast mad shadows across her figure as she moved. In a few more strides, she slowed, then stopped, holding her pot so that she could see him clearly. "Thomas Covenant?" she asked tentatively. "Are you not well?"
"No," he lashed at her, "I'm not well. Nothing's well, and it hasn't been since"-the words caught in his throat for an instant "since I was divorced." He glared at her, defying her to ask what a divorce was.
The way she held her light left most of her face in darkness; he could not see how she took his outburst. But some inner sensitivity seemed to guide her. When she spoke, she did not aggravate his pain with crude questions or condolences. Softly, she said, "I know a place where you may be alone."
He nodded sharply. Yes! He felt that his distraught nerves were about to snap. His throat was thick with violence. He did not want anyone to see what happened to him.
Gently, Lena touched his arm, led him away from the Stonedown toward the river. Under the dim starlight they reached the banks of. the Mithil, then turned down river. In half a mile, they came to an old stone bridge that gleamed with a damp, black
reflection, as if it had just arisen from the water for Covenant's use. The suggestiveness of that thought made him stop. He saw the span as a kind of threshold; crises lurked in the dark hills beyond the far riverbank. Abruptly, he asked, "Where are we going?" He was afraid that if he crossed that bridge he would not be able to recognize himself when he returned.
"To the far side," Lena said. "There you may be alone. Our people do not often cross the Mithil-it is said that the western mountains are not friendly, that the ill of Doom's Retreat which lies behind them has bent their spirit. But I have walked over all the western valley, stone-questing for suru-pa-maerl images, and have met no harm. There is a place nearby where you will not be disturbed."
For all its appearance of age, the bridge had an untrustworthy look to Covenant's eye. The unmortared joints seemed tenuous, held together only by dim, treacherous, star-cast shadows. When he stepped onto the bridge, he expected his foot to slip, the stones to tremble. But the arch was steady. At the top of the span, he paused to lean on the low side wall of the bridge and gaze down at the river.
The water flowed blackly under him, grumbling over its long prayer for absolution in the sea. And he looked into it as if he were asking it for courage. Could he not simply ignore the things that threatened him, ignore the opposing impossibilities, madnesses, of his situation-return to the Stonedown and pretend with blithe guile that he was Berek Halfhand reborn?
He could not. He was a leper; there were some lies he could not tell.
With a sharp twist of nausea, he found that he was pounding his fists on the wall. He snatched his hands up, tried to see if he had injured himself, but the dim stars showed him nothing.
Grimacing, he turned and followed Lena down to the western bank of the Mithil.
Soon they reached their destination. Lena led Covenant directly west for a distance, then up a steep hill to the right, and down a splintered ravine toward the river again. Carefully, they picked their way along the ragged bottom of the ravine as if they were balancing on the broken keel of a ship; its shattered hull rose up on either side of them, narrowing their horizons. A few trees stuck out of the sides like spars, and near the river the hulk lay aground on a swath of smooth sand which faded toward a flat rock promontory jutting into the river. The Mithil complained around this rock, as if annoyed by the brief constriction of its banks, and the sound blew up the ravine like a sea breeze moaning through a reefed wreck.
Lena halted on the sandy bottom. Kneeling, she scooped a shallow basin in the sand and emptied her pot of graveling into it. The fire-stones gave more light from the open basin, so that the ravine bottom was lit with yellow, and shortly Covenant felt a quiet warmth from the graveling. The touch of the stones' glow made him aware that the night was cool, a pleasant night for sitting around a fire. He squatted beside the graveling with a shiver like the last keen quivering of imminent hysteria.
After she had settled the graveling in the sand, Lena moved away toward the river. Where she stood on the promontory, the light barely reached her, and her form was dark; but Covenant could see that her face was raised to the heavens.
He followed her gaze up the black face of the mountains, and saw that the moon was rising. A silver sheen paled the stars along the rim of rock, darkening the valley with its shadow; but the shadow soon passed down the ravine, and moonlight fell on the river, giving it the appearance of old argent. And as the full moon arose from the mountains, it caught Lena, cast a white haze like a caress across her head and shoulders. Standing still by the river, she held her head up to the moon, and Covenant watched her with an odd grim jealousy, as if she were poised on a precipice that belonged to him.
Finally, when the moonlight had crossed the river into the eastern valley, Lena lowered her head and returned to the circle of the graveling. Without meeting Covenant's gaze, she asked softly, "Shall I go?"
Covenant's palms itched as if he wanted to strike her for even suggesting that she might stay. But at the same time he was afraid of the night; he did not want to face it alone. Awkwardly he got to his feet, paced a short distance away from her. Scowling up the hulk of the ravine, he fought to sound neutral as he said, "What do you want?"
Her reply, when it came, was quiet and sure. "I want to know more of you."
He winced, ducked his head as if claws had struck at him out of the air. Then he snatched himself erect again.
"Ask."
"Are you married?"
At that, he whirled to face her as if she had stabbed him in the back. Under the hot distress of his eyes and his bared teeth, she faltered, lowered her eyes and turned her head away. Seeing her uncertainty, he felt that his face had betrayed him again. He had not willed the snarling contortion of his features. He wanted to contain himself, not give way like this. not in front of her. Yet she aggravated his distress more than anything else he had encountered. Striving for self-control, he snapped, "Yes. No. It doesn't matter. Why ask?"
Under his glare, Lena dropped to the sand, sat on her feet by the graveling, and watched him obliquely from beneath her eyebrows. When she said nothing immediately, he began to pace up and down the swath of sand. As he moved, he turned and pulled fiercely at his wedding ring.
After a moment, Lena answered with an air of irrelevance, "There is a man who desires to marry me. He is Triock son of Thuler. Though I am not of age he woos me, so that when the time comes I will make no other choice. But if I were of age now I would not marry him. Oh, he is a good man in his way-a good Cattleherd, courageous in defense of his kine. And he is taller than most. But there are too many wonders in the world, too much power to know and beauty to share and to create-and I have not seen the Ranyhyn. I could not marry a Cattleherd who de
sires no more than a suru-pa-maerl for wife. Rather, I would go to the Loresraat as Atiaran my mother did, and I would stay and not falter no matter what trials the Lore put upon me, until I became a Lord. It is said that such things may happen. Do you think so?"
Covenant scarcely heard her. He was pacing out his agitation on the sand, enraged and undercut by an unwanted memory of Joan. Beside his lost love, Lena and the silver night of the Land failed of significance. The hollowness of his dream became suddenly obvious to his inner view, like an unveiled wilderland, a new permutation of the desolation of leprosy. This was not real-it was a torment that he inflicted upon himself in subconscious, involuntary revolt against his disease and loss. To himself, he groaned, Is it being outcast that does this? Is being cut off such a shock? By hell! I don't need any more. He felt that he was on the edge of screaming. In an effort to control himself, he dropped to the sand with his back to Lena and hugged his knees as hard as he could. Careless of the unsteadiness of his voice, he asked, "How do your people marry?"
In an uncomplicated tone, she said, "It is a simple thing, when a man and a woman choose each other. After the two have become friends, if they wish to marry they tell the Circle of elders. And the elders take a season to assure themselves that the friendship of the two is secure, with no hidden jealousy or failed promise behind them to disturb their course in later years. Then the Stonedown gathers in the center, and the elders take the two in their arms and ask, `Do you wish to share life, in joy and sorrow, work and rest, peace and struggle, to make the Land new?'
"The two answer, `Life with life, we choose to share the blessings and the service of the Earth.' "
For a moment, her star-lit voice paused reverently. Then she went on, "The Stonedown shouts together, `It is good! Let there be life and joy and power while the years last!' Then the day is spent in joy, and the new mates teach new games and dances and songs to the people, so that the happiness of the Stonedown
is renewed, and communion and pleasure do not fail in the Land."
She paused again shortly before continuing: "The marriage of Atiaran my mother with Trell my father was a bold day. The elders who teach us have spoken of it many times. Every day in the season of assurance, Trell climbed the mountains, searching forgotten paths and lost caves, hidden falls and new-broken crevices, for a stone of orcrest -a precious and many-powered rock. For there was a drought upon the South Plains at that time, and the life of the Stonedown faltered in famine.
"Then, on the eve of the marriage, he found his treasure-a piece of orcrest smaller than a fist. And in the time of joy, after the speaking of the rituals, he and Atiaran my mother saved the Stonedown. While she sang a deep prayer to the Earth-a song known in the Loresraat but long forgotten among our people he held the orcrest in his hand and broke it with the strength of his fingers. As the stone fell into dust, thunder rolled between the mountains, though there were no clouds, and one bolt of lightning sprang from the dust in his hand. Instantly, the blue sky turned black with thunderheads, and the rain began to fall. So the famine was broken, and the Stonedownors smiled on the coming days like a people reborn."
Though he clenched his legs with all his strength, Covenant could not master his dizzy rage. Joan! Lena's tale struck him like a mockery of his pains and failures.
I can't.
For a moment, his lower jaw shuddered under the effort he made to speak. Then he leaped up and dashed toward the river. As he covered the short distance, he bent and snatched a stone out of the sand. Springing onto the promontory, he hurled the stone with all the might of his body at the water.
Can't-!
A faint splash answered him, but at once the sound died under the heedless plaint of the river, and the ripples were swept away.
Softly at first, Covenant said to the river, "I gave Joan a pair of riding boots for a wedding present." Then, shaking his fists wildly, he shouted, "Riding boots! Does my impotence surprise you?!"
Unseen and incomprehending, Lena arose and moved toward Covenant, one hand stretched out as if to soothe the violence knotted in his back. But she paused a few steps away from him, searching for the right thing to say. After a moment, she whispered, "What happened to your wife?"
Covenant's shoulders jerked. Thickly, he said, "She's gone."
"How did she die?"
"Not her-me. She left me. Divorced. Terminated. When I needed her."
Indignantly, Lena wondered, "Why would such a thing happen while there is life?"
"I'm not alive." She heard fury climbing to the top of his voice. "I'm a leper. Outcast unclean.- Lepers are ugly and filthy. And abominable."
His words filled her with horror and protest. "How can it be?" she moaned. "You are not-abominable. What world is it that dares treat you so?"
His muscles jumped still higher in his shoulders, as if his hands were locked on the throat of some tormenting demon. "It's real. That is reality. Fact. The kind of thing that kills you if you don't believe it." With a gesture of rejection toward the river, he gasped, "This is a nightmare."
Lena flared with sudden courage. "I do not believe it. It may be that your world-but the Land-ah, the Land is real."
Covenant's back clenched abruptly still, and he said with preternatural quietness, "Are you trying to drive me crazy?"
His ominous tone startled her, chilled her. For an instant, her courage stumbled; she felt the river and the ravine closing around her like the jaws of a trap. Then Covenant whirled and struck her a stinging slap across the face.
The force of the blow sent her staggering back into the light of the graveling. He followed quickly, his face contorted in a wild grin. As she caught her balance, got one last, clear, terrified look at him, she felt sure that he meant to kill her. The thought paralyzed her. She stood dumb and helpless while he approached.
Reaching her, he knotted his hands in the front of her shift and rent the fabric like a veil. She could not move. For an instant, he stared at her, at her high, perfect breasts and her short slip, with grim triumph in his eyes, as though he had just exposed some foul plot. Then he gripped her shoulder with his left hand and tore away her slip with his right, forcing her down to the sand as he uncovered her.
Now she wanted to resist, but her limbs would not move; she was helpless with anguish.
A moment later, he dropped the burden of his weight on her chest, and her loins were stabbed with a wild, white fire that broke her silence, made her scream. But even as she cried out she knew that it was too late for her. Something that her people thought of as a gift had been torn from her.
But Covenant did not feel like a taker. His climax flooded him as if he had fallen into a Mithil of molten fury. Suffocating in passion, he almost swooned. Then time seemed to pass him by, and he lay still for moments that might have been hours for all he knew -hours during which his world could have crumbled, unheeded.
At last he remembered the softness of Lena's body under him, felt the low shake of her sobbing. With an effort, he heaved himself up and to his feet. When he looked down at her in the graveling light, he saw the blood on her loins. Abruptly, his head became giddy, unbalanced, as though he were peering over a precipice. He turned and hurried with a shambling, unsteady gait toward the river, pitched himself fiat on the rock, and vomited the weight of his guts into the water. And the Mithil erased his vomit as cleanly as if nothing had happened.
He lay still on the rock while the exhaustion of his exacerbated nerves overcame him. He did not hear Lena arise, gather the shreds of her clothing, speak, or climb away out of the shattered ravine. He heard
nothing but the long lament of the river-saw nothing but the ashes of his burnt-out passion-felt nothing but the dampness of the rock on his cheeks like tears.

Eight: The Dawn of the Message


THE hard bones of the rock slowly brought Thomas Covenant out of dreams of close embraces. For a time, he drifted on the rising current of the dawn-surrounded on his ascetic, sufficient bed by the searching self-communion of the river, the fresh odors of day, the wheeling cries of birds as they sprang into the sky. While his self-awareness, returned, he felt at peace, harmonious with his context; and even the uncompromising hardness of the stone seemed apposite to him, a proper part of a whole morning.
His first recollections of the previous night were of orgasm, heartrending, easing release and satisfaction so precious that he would have been willing to coin his soul to make such things part of his real life. For a long moment of joy, he re-experienced that sensation. Then he remembered that to get it he had hurt Lena.
Lena!
He rolled over, sat up in the dawn. The sun had not yet risen above the mountains, but enough light reflected into the valley from the plains for him to see that she was gone.
She had left her fire burning in the sand up the ravine from him. He lurched to his feet, scanned the ravine and both banks of the Mithil for some sign of her-or, his imagination leaped, of Stonedownors
seeking vengeance. His heart thudded; all those rockstrong people would not be interested in his explanations or apologies. He searched for evidence of pursuit like a fugitive.
But the dawn was as undisturbed as if it contained no people, no crimes or desires for punishment. Gradually, Covenant's panic receded. After a last look around, he began to prepare for whatever lay ahead of him.
He knew that he should get going at once, hurry along the river toward the relative safety of the plains. But he was a leper, and could not undertake solitary journeys lightly. He needed to organize himself.
He did not thing about Lena; he knew instinctively that he could not afford to think about her. He had violated her trust, violated the trust of the Stonedown; that was as close to his last night's rage as he could go. It was past, irrevocable-and illusory, like the dream itself. With an effort that made him tremble, he put it behind him. Almost by accident on Kevin's Watch, he had discovered the answer to all such insanity: keep moving, don't think about it, survive. That answer was even more necessary now. His "Berek" fear of the previous evening seemed relatively unimportant. His resemblance to a legendary hero was only a part of a dream, not a compulsory fact or demand. He put it behind him also. Deliberately, he gave himself a thorough scrutiny and VSE.
When he was sure that he had no hidden injuries, no dangerous purple spots, he moved out to the end of the promontory. He was still trembling. He needed more discipline, mortification; his hands shook as if they could not steady themselves without his usual shaving ritual. But the penknife in his pocket was inadequate for shaving. After a moment, he took a deep breath, gripped the edge of the rock, and dropped himself, clothes and all, into the river for a bath.
The current tugged at him seductively, urging him to float off under blue skies into a spring day. But the water was too cold; he could only stand the chill long enough to duck and thrash in the stream for a moment. Then he hauled himself onto the rock and stood up, blowing spray off his face. Water from his hair kept running into his eyes, blinding him momentarily to the fact that Atiaran stood on the sand by the graveling. She contemplated him with a grave, firm glance.
Covenant froze, dripping as if he had been caught in the middle of a flagrant act. For a moment, he and Atiaran measured each other across the sand and rock. When she started to speak, he cringed inwardly, expecting her to revile, denounce, hurl imprecations. But she only said, "Come to the graveling. You must dry yourself."
In surprise, he scrutinized her tone with all the high alertness of his senses, but he could hear nothing in it except determination and quiet sadness. Suddenly he guessed that she did not know what had happened to her daughter.
Breathing deeply to control the labor of his heart, he moved forward and huddled down next to the graveling. His mind raced with improbable speculations to account for Atiaran's attitude, but he kept his face to the warmth and remained silent, hoping that she would say something to let him know where he stood with her.
Almost at once, she murmured, "I knew where to find you. Before I returned from speaking with the Circle of elders, Lena told Trell that you were here."
She stopped, and Covenant forced himself to ask, "Did he see her?"
He knew that it was a suspicious question. But Atiaran answered simply, "No. She went to spent the night with a friend. She only called out her message as she passed our home."
Then for several long moments Covenant sat still and voiceless, amazed by the implications of what Lena had done. Only called out! At first, his brain reeled with thoughts of relief. He was safe-temporarily, at least. With her reticence, Lena had purchased precious time for him. Clearly, the people of this Land were prepared to make sacrifices
After another moment, he understood that she had not made her sacrifice for him. He could not imagine that she cared for his personal safety. No, she chose to protect him because he was a Berek-figure, a bearer of messages to the Lords. She did not want his purpose to be waylaid by the retribution of the Stonedown. This was her contribution to the defense of the Land from Lord Foul the Gray Slayer.
It was a heroic contribution. In spite of his discipline, his fear, he sensed the violence Lena had done herself for the sake of his message. He seemed to see her huddling naked behind a rock in the foothills throughout that bleak night, shunning for the first time in her young life the open arms of her community bearing the pain and shame of her riven body alone so that he would not be required to answer for it. An unwanted memory of the blood on her loins writhed in him.
His shoulders bunched to strangle the thought. Through locked teeth, he breathed to himself, I've got to go to the Council.
When he had steadied himself, he asked grimly, "What did the elders say?"
 "There was little for them to say," she replied in a flat voice. "I told them what I know of you-and of the Land's peril.
They agreed that I must guide you to Lord's Keep. For that purpose I have come to you now. See "-she indicated two packs lying near her feet "I am ready. Trell my husband has given me his blessing. It grieves me to go without giving my love to Lena my daughter, but time is urgent. You have not told me all your message, but I sense that from this day forward each delay is hazardous. The elders will " give thought to the defense of the plains. We must.
Covenant met her eyes, and this time he understood the sad determination in them. She was afraid, and did not believe that she would live to return to her family. He felt a sudden pity for her. Without fully comprehending what he said, he tried to reassure her. "Things aren't as bad as they might be. A Cavewight has found the Staff of Law, and I gather he doesn't really know how to use it. Somehow, the Lords have got to get it away from him."
But his attempt miscarried. Atiaran stiffened and said, "Then the life of the Land is in our speed. Alas that we cannot go to the Ranyhyn for help. But the Ramen have little countenance for the affairs of the Land, and no Ranyhyn has been ridden, save by Lord or Bloodguard, since the age began. We must walk, Thomas Covenant, and Revelstone is three hundred long leagues distant. Is your clothing dry? We must be on our way."
Covenant was ready; he had to get away from this place. He gathered himself to his feet and said, "Fine. Let's go."
However, the look that Atiaran gave him as he stood held something unresolved. In a low voice as if she were mortifying herself, she said, "Do you trust me to guide you, Thomas Covenant? You do not know me. I failed in the Loresraat."
Her tone seemed to imply not that she was undependable, but that he had the right to judge her. But he was in no position to judge anyone. "I trust you," he rasped. "Why not? You said yourself-" He faltered, then forged ahead. "You said yourself that I come to save or damn the Land."
"True," she returned simply. "But you do not have the stink of a servant of the Gray Slayer. My heart tells me that it is the fate of the Land to put faith in you, for good or ill."
"Then let's go." He took the pack that Atiaran lifted toward him and shrugged his shoulders into the straps. But before she put on her own pack, she knelt to the graveling in the sand. Passing her hands over the fire-stones, she began a low humming-a soft tune that sounded ungainly in her mouth, as if she were unaccustomed to it-and under her waving gestures the yellow light faded. In a moment, the stones had lapsed into a pale, pebbly gray, as if she had lulled them to sleep, and their heat dissipated. When they were cold, she scooped them into their pot, covered it, and stored it in her pack.
The sight reminded Covenant of all the things he
did not know about this dream. As Atiaran got to her feet, he said, "There's only one thing I need. I want you to talk to me-tell me all about the Loresraat and the Lords and everything I might be interested in." Then because he could not give her the reason for his request, he concluded lamely, "It'll pass the time."
With a quizzical glance at him, she settled her pack on her shoulders. "You are strange, Thomas Covenant. I think you are too eager to know my ignorance. But what I know I will tell you-though without your raiment and speech it would pass my belief to think you an utter stranger to the Land. Now come. There are treasure-berries aplenty along our way this morning. They will serve as breakfast. The food we carry must be kept for the chances of the road."
Covenant nodded, and followed her as she began climbing out of the ravine. He was relieved to be moving again, and the distance passed quickly. Soon they were down by the river, approaching the bridge.
Atiaran strode straight onto the bridge, but when she reached the top of the span she stopped. A moment after Covenant joined her, she gestured north along the Mithil toward the distant plains. "I tell you openly, Thomas Covenant," she said, "I do not mean to take a direct path to Lord's Keep. The Keep is west of north from us, three hundred leagues as the eye sees across the Center Plains of the Land. There many people live, in Stonedown and Woodhelven, and it might chance that both road and help could be found to take us where we must go. But we could not hope for horses. They are rare in the Land, and few folk but those of Revelstone know them.
"It is in my heart that we may save time by journeying north, across the Mithil when it swings east, and so into the land of Andelain, where the fair Hills are the flower of all the beauties of the Earth. There we will reach the Soulsease River, and it may be that we will find a boat to carry us up that sweet stream, past the westland of Trothgard, where the promises of the Lords are kept, to great Revelstone itself, the Lord's Keep. All travelers are blessed by the currents of the Soulsease, and our journey will end sooner if we find a carrier there. But we must pass within fifty leagues of Mount Thunder-Gravin Threndor." As she said the ancient name, a shiver seemed to run through her voice. "It is there or nowhere that the Staff of Law has been found, and I do not wish to go even as close as Andelain to the wrong wielder of such might."
She paused for a moment, hesitating, then went on: "There would be rue unending if a corrupt Cavewight gained possession of the ring you bear-the evil ones are quick to unleash such forces as wild magic. And even were the Cavewight unable to use the ring, I fear that ur-viles still live under Mount Thunder. They are lore-wise creatures, and white gold would not surpass them.
"But time rides urgently on us, and we must save it where we may. And there is another reason for seeking the passage of Andelain at this time of year-if we hasten. But I should not speak of it. You will see it and rejoice, if no ill befall us on our way."
She fixed her eyes on Covenant, turning all their inward strength on him, so that he felt, as he had the previous evening, that she was searching for his weaknesses. He feared that she would discover his night's work in his face, and he had to force himself to meet her gaze until she said, "Now tell me, Thomas Covenant. Will you go where I lead?"
Feeling both shamed and relieved, he answered, "Let's get on with it. I'm ready."
"That is well." She nodded, started again toward the east bank. But Covenant spent a moment looking down at the river. Its soft plaint sounded full of echoes, and they seemed to moan at him with serene irony, Does my impotence surprise you? A cloud of trouble darkened his face, but he clenched himself, rubbed his ring, and stalked away after Atiaran, leaving the Mithil to flow on its way like a stream of forgetfulness or a border of death.
As the sun climbed over the eastern mountains, Atiaran and Covenant were moving north, downstream along the river toward the open plains. At first, they traveled in silence. Covenant was occupied with short forays into the hills to his right, gathering aliantha. He found their tangy peach flavor as keenly delicious as before; a fine essence in their juice made hunger and taste into poignant sensations. He refrained from taking all the berries off any one bush he had to range away from Atiaran's sternly forward track often to get enough food to satisfy him-and he scattered the seeds faithfully, as Lena had taught him. Then he had to trot to catch up with Atiaran. In this way, he passed nearly a league, and when he finished eating, the valley was perceptibly broader. He made one last side trip-this time to the river for a drink-then hurried to take a position beside Atiaran.
Something in the set of her features seemed to ask him not to talk, so he disciplined himself to stillness with survival drills. Then he strove to regain the mechanical ticking stride which had carried him so far from Haven Farm. Atiaran appeared resigned to a trek of three hundred leagues, but he was not. He sensed that he would need all his leper's skills to hike for even a day without injuring himself. In the rhythm of his steps, he struggled to master the unruliness of his situation.
He knew that eventually he would have to explain his peculiar danger to Atiaran. He might need her help, at least her comprehension. But not yet-not yet. He did not have enough control.
But after a while, she changed direction, began angling away from the river up into the northeastern foothills. This close to the mountains, the hills were steep and involuted, and she seemed to be following no path. Behind her, Covenant scrambled up and staggered down the rocky, twisting slopes, though the natural lay of the land tried constantly to turn them westward. The sides of his neck started to ache from the weight of his pack, and twitches jumped like incipient cramps under his shoulder blades. Soon he was panting heavily, and muttering against the folly of Atiaran's choice of directions.
Toward midmorning, she stopped to rest on the downward curve of a high hill. She remained standing, but Covenant's muscles were trembling from the exertion, and he dropped to the ground beside her, breathing hard. When he had regained himself a little, he panted, "Why didn't we go around, north past these hills, then east? Save all this up and down."
"Two reasons" she said shortly. "Ahead there is a long file north through the hills-easy walking so that we will save time. And again"-she paused while she looked around-"we may lose something. Since we left the bridge, there has been a fear in me that we are followed."
"Followed?" Covenant jerked out. "Who?"
"I do not know. It may be that the spies of the Gray Slayer are already abroad. It is said that his highest servants, his Ravers, cannot die while he yet lives. They have no bodies of their own, and their spirits wander until they find living beings which they can master. Thus they appear as animals or humans, as chance allows, corrupting the life of the Land. But it is my hope that we will not be followed through these hills. Are you rested? We must go."
After adjusting her robe under the straps of her pack, she set off again down the slope. A moment later, Covenant went groaning after her.
For the rest of the morning, he had to drive himself to persevere in the face of exhaustion. His legs grew numb with fatigue, and the weight on his back seemed to constrict his breathing so that he panted as if he were suffocating. He was not conditioned for such work; lurching unsteadily, he stumbled up and down the hills. Time and again, only his boots and tough trousers saved him from damage. But Atiaran moved ahead of him smoothly, with hardly a wasted motion or false step, and the sight of her drew him onward.
But finally she turned down into a long ravine that ran north as far as he could see, like a cut in the hills. A small stream flowed down the center of the file, and they stopped beside it to drink, bathe their faces, and rest. This time, they both took off their packs and dropped to the ground. Groaning deeply, Covenant lay flat on his back with his eyes closed.
For a while he simply relaxed, listened to his own hoarse respiration until it softened and he could hear behind it the wind whistling softly. Then he opened his eyes to take in his surroundings.
He found himself looking up four thousand feet at Kevin's Watch.
The view was unexpected; he sat up as if to look at it more closely. The Watch was just east and south from him, and it leaned out into the sky from its cliff face like an accusing finger. At that distance, the stone looked black and fatal, and it seemed to hang over the file down which he and Atiaran would walk. It reminded him of the Despiser and darkness.
"Yes," Atiaran said, "that is Kevin's Watch. There stood Kevin Landwaster, High Lord and wielder of the Staff, direct descendant of Berek Halfhand, in the last battle against the Gray Slayer. It is said that there he knew defeat, and mad grief. In the blackness which whelmed his heart he-the most powerful champion in all the ages of the Land-even he, High Lord Kevin, sworn Earthfriend, brought down the Desecration, the end of all things in the Land for many generations. It is not a good omen that you have been there."
As she spoke, Covenant turned toward her, and saw that she was ,gazing, not up at the rock, but inward, as if she were considering how badly she would have failed in Kevin's place. Then, abruptly, she gathered herself and stood up. "But there is no help for it," she said. "Our path lies under the shadow of the Watch for many leagues. Now we must go on." When Covenant moaned, she commanded, "Come. We dare not go slowly, for fear that we will be too late at the end. Our way is easier now. And if it will help your steps, I will talk to you of the Land."
Reaching for his pack, Covenant asked, "Are we still being followed?"
"I do not know. I have neither heard nor seen any sign. But my heart misgives me. I feel some wrong upon our path this day."
Covenant pulled on his pack and staggered wincing to his feet. His heart misgave him also, for reasons of its own. Here under Kevin's Watch, the humming wind sounded like the thrum of distant vulture wings. Settling the pack straps on his raw shoulders, he bent under the weight, and went with Atiaran down the bottom of the file.
For the most part, the cut was straight and smooth-floored, though never more than fifteen feet- across. However, there was room beside the narrow stream for Atiaran and Covenant to walk together. As they traveled, pausing at every rare aliantha to pick and eat a few berries, Atiaran sketched in a few of the wide blanks in Covenant's knowledge of the Land.
"It is difficult to know how to speak of it," she began. "Everything is part of everything, and each question which I can answer raises three more which I cannot. My lore is limited to what all learn quickly in their first years in the Loresraat. But I will tell you what I can.
"Berek Heartthew's son was Damelon Giantfriend, and his son was Loric Vilesilencer, who stemmed the corruption of the Demondim, rendering them impotent." As she spoke, her voice took on a cadence that reminded Covenant of her singing. She did not recite dry facts; she narrated a tale that was of sovereign importance to her, to the Land. "And Kevin, whom we name Landwaster more in pity than in condemnation of his despair, was the son of Loric, and High Lord in his place when the Staff was passed on. For a thousand years, Kevin stood at the head of the Council, and he extended the Earthfriendship of the Lords beyond anything known before in the Land, and he was greatly honored.
"In his early years, he was wise as well as mighty and knowledgeable. When he saw the first hints that the ancient shadow was alive, he looked far into the chances of the future, and what he saw gave him cause to fear. Therefore he gathered all his Lore into Seven Wards
Seven Wards of ancient Lore For Land's protection, wall and door
and hid them, so that his knowledge would not pass from the Land even if he and the Old Lords fell.
"For many many long years the Land lived on in peace. But during that time, the Gray Slayer rose up in the guise of a friend. In some way, the eyes of Kevin were blinded, and he accepted his enemy as a friend and Lord. And for that reason, the Lords and all their works passed from the Earth.
"But when Kevin's betrayal had brought defeat and Desolation, and the Land had lain under the bane for many generations, and had begun to heal, it called out to the people who lived in hiding in the Wastes and the Northron Climbs. Slowly, they returned. As the years passed, and the homes and villages became secure, some folk traveled, exploring the Land in search of half-remembered legends. And when they finally braved Giant Woods, they came to the old land of Seareach, and found that the Giants, Rockbrothers of the people of the Land, had survived the Ritual of Desecration.
"There are many songs, old and new, praising the fealty of the Giants-with good reason. When the Giants learned that people had returned to the Land, they began a great journey, sojourning over all the Land to every new Stonedown and Woodhelven, teaching the tale of Kevin's defeat and renewing the old Rockbrotherhood. Then, taking with them those people who chose to come, the giants ended their journey at Revelstone, the ageless castle-city which they had riven out of the rock of the mountain for High Lord Damelon, as surety of the bond between them.
"At Revelstone, the Giants gave a gift to the gathered people. They revealed the First Ward, the fundamental store of the beginnings of Kevin's Lore. For he had trusted it to the Giants before the last battle. And the people accepted that Ward and consecrated themselves, swearing Earthfriendship and loyalty to the Power and beauty of the Land.
"One thing more they swore-Peace, a calmness of self to protect the Land from destructive emotions like those that maddened Kevin. For it was clear to all there gathered that power is a dreadful thing, and that the knowledge of power dims the seeing of the wise. When they beheld the First Ward, they feared a new Desecration. Therefore they swore to master the Lore, so that they might heal the Land-and to master themselves, so that they would not fall into the anger and despair which made Kevin his own worst foe.
"These oaths were carried back to all the people of the Land, and all the people swore. Then the few who were chosen at Revelstone for the great work took the First Ward to Kurash Plenethor, Stricken Stone, where the gravest damage of the last battle was done. They named the land Trothgard, as a token of their promise of healing, and there they founded the Loresraat-a place of learning where they sought to regain the knowledge and power of the Old Lords, and to train themselves in the Oath of Peace."
Then Atiaran fell silent, and she and Covenant walked down the file in stillness textured by the whispering of the stream and by the occasional calls of the birds. He found that her tale did help him to keep up their pace. It caused him to forget himself somewhat, forget the raw ache of his shoulders and feet. And her voice seemed to give him strength; her tale was like a promise that any exhaustion borne in the Land's service would not be wasted.
After a time, he urged her to continue. "Can you tell me about the Loresraat?"
The bitter vehemence of her reply surprised him. "Do you remind me that I am of all people the least worthy to talk of these matters? You, Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and white gold wielder-do you reproach me?"
He could only stare dumbly at her, unable to fathom the years of struggling that filled her spacious eyes.
"I do not need your reminders."
But a moment later she faced forward again, her expression set to meet the north. "Now you reproach me indeed," she said. "I am too easily hurt that the whole world knows what I know so well myself. Like a guilty woman, I fail to believe the innocence of others. Please pardon me-you should receive better treatment than this."
Before he could respond, she forged ahead. "In this way I describe the Loresraat. It stands in Trothgard in the Valley of Two Rivers, and it is a community of study and learning. To that place go all who will, and there they consecrate themselves to Earthfriendship and the Lore of the Old Lords.
"This Lore is a deep matter, not mastered yet despite all the years and effort that have been given to it. The chiefest problem is translation, for the language of the Old Lords was not like ours, and the words which are simple at one place are difficult at another. And after translation, the Lore must be interpreted, and then the skills to use it must be learned. When I"-she faltered briefly-"when I studied there, the Lorewardens who taught me said that all the Loresraat had not yet passed the surface of Kevin's mighty knowledge. And that knowledge is only a seventh part of the whole, the First Ward of Seven."
Covenant heard an unwitting echo of Foul's contempt in her words, and it made him listen to her still more closely.
"Easiest of translation," she went on, "has been the Warlore, the arts of battle and defense. But there much skill is required. Therefore one part of the Loresraat deals solely with those who would follow the Sword, and join the Warward of Lord's Keep. But there have been no wars in our time, and in my years at the Loresraat the Warward numbered scarcely two thousand men and women.
"Thus the chief work of the Loresraat is in teaching and studying the language and knowledge of the Earthpower. First, the new learners are taught the history of the Land, the prayers and songs and legends-in time, all that is known of the Old Lords and their struggles against the Gray Slayer. Those who master this become Lorewardens. They teach others, or search out new knowledge and power from the First Ward. The price of such mastery is high-such purity and determination and insight and courage are required by Kevin's Lore-and there are some," she said as if she were resolved not to spare her own feelings, "who cannot match the need. I failed when that which I learned made my heart quail-when the Lorewardens led me to see, just a little way, into the Despite of the Gray Slayer. That I could not bear, and so I broke my devotion, and returned to Mithil Stonedown to use the little that I knew for my people. And now, when I have forgotten so much, my trial is upon me."
She sighed deeply, as if it grieved her to consent to her fate. "But that is no matter. In the Loresraat, those who follow and master both Sword and Staff, who earn a place in the Warward and among the Lorewardens, and who do not turn away to pursue private dreams in isolation, as do the Unfettered those brave hearts are named Lords, and they join the Council which guides the healing and protection of the Land. From their number, they choose the High Lord, to act for all as the Lore requires:

And one High Lord to wield the Law
To keep all uncorrupt Earth's Power's core.

"In my years at the Loresraat, the High Lord was Variol Tamarantha-mate son of Pentil. But he was old, even for a Lord, and the Lords live longer than other folk-and our Stonedown has had no news of Revelstone or Loresraat for many years. I do not know who leads the Council now."
Without thinking, Covenant said, "Prothall son of Dwillian."
"Ah!" Atiaran gasped. "He knows me. As a Lorewarden he taught me the first prayers. He will remember that I failed, and will not trust my mission." She shook her head in pain. Then, after a moment's reflection, she added, "And you have known this. You know all. Why do you seek to shame the rudeness of my knowledge? That is not kind."
"Hellfire!" Covenant snapped. Her reproach made him suddenly angry. "Everybody in this whole business, you and"-but he could not bring himself to say Lena's name" and everyone keep accusing me of being some sort of closet expert. I tell you, I don't know one damn thing about this unless someone explains it to me. I'm not your bloody Berek."
Atiaran gave him a look full of skepticism-the fruit of long, harsh self-doubt-and he felt an answering urge to prove himself in some way. He stopped, pulled himself erect against the weight of his pack. "This is the message of Lord Foul the Despiser: `Say to the Council of Lords, and to High Lord Prothall son of Dwillian, that the uttermost limit of their span of days upon the Land is seven times seven years from this present time. Before the end of those days are numbered, I will have the command of life and death in my hand."'
Abruptly, he caught himself. His words seemed to beat down the file like ravens, and he felt a hot leper's shame in his cheeks, as though he had defiled the day. For an instant, complete stillness surrounded him-the birds were as silent as if they had been stricken out of the sky, and the stream appeared motionless. In the noon heat, his flesh was slick with sweat.
For that instant, Atiaran gaped aghast at him. Then she cried, "Melenkurion abatha! Do not speak it until you must! I cannot preserve us from such ills."
The silence shuddered, passed; the stream began chattering again, and a bird swooped by overhead. Covenant wiped his forehead with an unsteady hand. "Then stop treating me as if I'm something I'm not."
"How can I?" she responded heavily. "You are closed to me, Thomas Covenant. I do not see you."
She used the word see as if it meant something he did not understand. "What do you mean, you don't see me?" he demanded sourly. "I'm standing right in front of you."
"You are closed to me," she repeated. "I do not know whether you are well or ill."
He blinked at her uncertainly, then realized that she had unwittingly given him a chance to tell her about his leprosy. He took the opportunity; he was angry enough for the job now. Putting aside his incomprehension, he grated, "Ill, of course. I'm a leper."
At this, Atiaran groaned as if he had just confessed to a crime. "Then woe to the Land, for you have the wild magic and can undo us all."
"Will you cut that out?" Brandishing his left fist, he gritted, "It's just a ring. To remind me of everything I have to live without. It's got no more-wild magic-than a rock."
"The Earth is the source of all power," whispered Atiaran.
With an effort, Covenant refrained from shouting his frustration at her. She was talking past him, reacting to him as if his words meant something he had not intended. "Back up a minute," he said. "Let's get this straight. I said I was ill. What does that mean to you? Don't you even have diseases in this world?"
For an instant, her lips formed the word diseases. Then a sudden fear tightened her face, and her gaze sprang up past Covenant's left shoulder.
He turned to see what frightened her. He found nothing behind him; but as he scanned the west rim of the file, he heard a scrabbling noise. Pebbles and shale fell into the cut.
"The follower!" Atiaran cried. "Run! Run!"
Her urgency caught him; he spun and followed her as fast as he could go down the file.
Momentarily, he forgot his weakness, the weight of his pack, the heat. He pounded after Atiaran's racing heels as if he could hear his pursuer poised above him on the rim of the file. But soon his lungs seemed to be tearing under the exertion, and he began to lose his balance. When he stumbled, his fragile body almost struck the ground.
Atiaran shouted, "Run!" but he hauled up short, swung trembling around to face the pursuit.
A leaping figure flashed over the edge of the cut and dropped toward him. He dodged away from the plummet, flung up his arms to ward off the figure's swinging arm.
As the attacker passed, he scored the backs of Covenant's fingers with a knife. Then he hit the ground and rolled, came to his feet with his back to the east wall of the cut, his knife weaving threats in front of him.
The sunlight seemed to etch everything starkly in Covenant's vision. He saw the unevennesses of the wall, the shadows stretched under them like rictus.
The attacker was a young man with a powerful frame and dark hair-unmistakably a Stonedownor, though taller than most. His knife was made of stone, and woven into the shoulders of his tunic was his family insignia, a pattern like crossed lightning. Rage and hate strained his features as if his skull were splitting. "Raver!" he yelled. "Ravisher!"
He approached swinging his blade. Covenant was forced to retreat until he stood in the stream, ankledeep in cool water.
Atiaran was running toward them, though she was too far away to intervene between Covenant and the knife.
Blood welled from the backs of his fingers. His pulse throbbed in the cuts, throbbed in his fingertips.
He heard Atiaran's commanding shout: "Triock!"
The knife slashed closer. He saw it as clearly as if it were engraved on his eyeballs.
His pulse pounded in his fingertips.
The young man gathered himself for a killing thrust.
Atiaran shouted again, "Triock! Are you mad? You swore the Oath of Peace!"
In his fingertips?
He snatched up his hand, stared at it. But his sight was suddenly dim with awe. He could not grasp what was happening. .
That's impossible, he breathed in the utterest astonishment. Impossible.
His numb, leprosy-ridden fingers were aflame with pain.
Atiaran neared the two men and stopped, dropped
for a moment before she rasped hoarsely, "Loyalty is due. I forbid your vengeance."
"Does he go unpunished?" protested Triock.
"There is peril in the Land," she answered. "Let the Lords punish him." A taste of blood sharpened her voice. "They will know what to think of a stranger who attacks the innocent." Then her weakness returned. "The matter is beyond me. Triock, remember your Oath." She gripped her shoulders, knotted her fingers in the leaf pattern of her robe as if to hold her sorrow down.
Triock turned toward Covenant. There was something broken in the 'young man's face-a shattered or wasted capacity for contentment, joy. He snarled with the force of an anathema, "I know you, Unbeliever. We will meet again." Then abruptly he began moving away. He accelerated until he was sprinting, beating out his reproaches on the hard floor of the file. In a moment, he reached a place where the west wall sloped away, and then he was out of sight, gone from the cut into the hills.
"Impossible," Covenant murmured. "Can't happen. Nerves don't regenerate." But his fingers hurt as if they were being crushed with pain. Apparently nerves did regenerate in the Land. He wanted to scream against the darkness and the terror, but he seemed to have lost all control of his throat, voice, self.
As if from a distance made great by abhorrence or pity, Atiaran said, "You have made of my heart a wilderland."
"Nerves don't regenerate." Covenant's throat clenched as if he were gagging, but he could not scream. "They don't."
"Does that make you free?" she demanded softly, bitterly. "Does it justify your crime?"
"Crime?" He heard the word like a knife thrust through the beating wings. "Crime?" His blood ran from the cuts as if he were a normal man, but the flow was decreasing steadily. With a sudden convulsion, he caught hold of himself, cried miserably, "I'm in pain!"

The sound of his wail jolted him, knocked the swirling darkness back a step. Pain! The impossibility bridged a gap for him. Pain was for healthy people, people whose nerves were alive.
Can't happen. Of course it can't. That proves it -proves this is all a dream.
All at once, he felt an acute desire to weep. But he was a leper, and had spent too much time learning to dam such emotional channels. Lepers could not afford grief. Trembling feverishly, he plunged his cut hand into the stream.
"Pain is pain," Atiaran grated. "What is your pain to me? You have done a black deed, Unbeliever violent and cruel, without commitment or sharing. You have given me a pain that no blood or time will wash clean. And Lena my daughter-1 Ah, I pray that the Lords will punish-punish!"
The running water was chill and clear. After a moment, his fingers began to sting in the cold, and an ache spread up through his knuckles to his wrist. Red plumed away from his cuts down the stream, but the cold water soon stopped his bleeding. As he watched the current rinse clean his injury, his grief and fear turned to anger. Because Atiaran was his only companion, he growled at her, "Why should I go? None of this matters-1 don't give a damn about your precious Land."
"By the Seven!" Atiaran's hard tone seemed to chisel words out of the air. "You will go to Revelstone if I must drag you each step of the way."
He lifted his hand to examine it. Triock's knife had sliced him as neatly as a razor; there were no jagged edges to conceal dirt or roughen the healing. But the cut had reached bone in his middle two fingers, and blood still seeped from them. He stood up. For the first time since he had been attacked, he looked at Atiaran.
She stood a few paces from him, with her hands clenched together at her heart as if its pulsing hurt her. She glared at him abominably, and her face was taut with intimations of fierce, rough strength. He could see that she was prepared to fight him to Revelstone if necessary. She shamed him, aggravated his ire. Belligerently, he waved his injury at her. "I need a bandage."
For an instant, her gaze intensified as if she were about to hurl herself at him. But then she mastered herself, swallowed her pride. She went over to her pack, opened it, and took out a strip of white cloth, which she tore at an appropriate length as she returned to Covenant. Holding his hand carefully, she inspected the cut, nodded her approval of its condition, then bound the soft fabric firmly around his fingers. "I have no hurtloam," she said, "and cannot take the time to search for it. But the cut looks well, and will heal cleanly."
When she was done, she went back to her pack. Swinging it onto her shoulders, she said, "Come. We have lost time." Without a glance at Covenant, she set off down the file.
He remained where he was for a moment, tasting the ache of his fingers. There was a hot edge to his hurt, as if the knife were still in the wound. But he had the answer to it now. The darkness had receded somewhat, and he could look about him without panic. Yet he was still afraid. He was dreaming healthy nerves; he had not realized that he was so close to collapse. Helpless, lying unconscious somewhere, he was in the grip of a crisis-a crisis of his ability to survive. To weather it he would need every bit of discipline or intransigence he could find.
On an impulse, he bent and tried to pull Triock's knife from the ground with his right hand. His halfgrip slipped when he tugged straight up on the handle, but by working it back and forth he was able to loosen it, draw it free. The whole knife was shaped and polished out of one flat sliver of stone, with a haft leather-bound for a secure hold, and an edge that seemed sharp enough for shaving. He tested it on his left forearm, and found that it lifted off his hair as smoothly as if the blade were lubricated.
He slipped it under his belt. Then he hitched his pack higher on his shoulders and started after Atiaran.

Nine: Jehannum


BEFORE the afternoon was over, he had lapsed into a dull, hypnotized throb of pain. His pack straps constricted the circulation in his arms, multiplied the aching of his hand; his damp socks gave him blisters to which his toes were acutely and impossibly sensitive; weariness made his muscles as awkward as lead. But Atiaran moved constantly, severely, ahead of him down the file, and he followed her as if he were being dragged by the coercion of her will. His eyes became sightless with fatigue; he lost all sense of time, of movement, of everything except pain. He hardly knew that he had fallen asleep, and he felt a detached, impersonal sense of surprise when he was finally shaken awake.
He found himself lying in twilight on the floor of the file. After rousing him, Atiaran handed him a bowl of hot broth. Dazedly, he gulped at it. When the bowl was empty, she took it and handed him a large flask of springwine. He gulped it also.
From his stomach, the springwine seemed to send long, soothing fingers out to caress and relax each of his raw muscles, loosening them until he felt that he could no longer sit up. He adjusted his pack as a pillow, then lay down to sleep again. His last sight before his eyes fell shut was of Atiaran, sitting enshadowed on the far side of the graveling pot, her face set relentlessly toward the north.
The next day dawned clear, cool, and fresh. Atiaran finally succeeded in awakening Covenant as darkness was fading from the sky. He sat up painfully, rubbed his face as if it had gone numb during the night. A moment passed before he recollected the new sensitivity of his nerves; then he flexed his hands, stared at them as if he had never seen them before. They were alive, alive.
He pushed the blanket aside to uncover his feet. When he squeezed his toes through his boots, the pain of his blisters answered sharply. His toes were as alive as his fingers.
His guts twisted sickly. With a groan, he asked himself, How long-how long is this going to go on? He did not feel that he could endure much more.
Then he remembered that he had not had on a blanket when he went to sleep the night before. Atiaran must have spread it over him.
He winced, avoided her eyes by shambling woodenly to the stream to wash his face. Where did she find the courage to do such things for him? As he splashed cold water on his neck and cheeks, he found that he was afraid of her again.
But she did not act like a threat. She fed him, checked the bandage on his injured hand, packed up the camp as if he were a burden to which she had already become habituated. Only the lines of sleeplessness around her eyes and the grim set of her mouth showed that she was clenching herself.
When she was ready to go, he gave himself a deliberate VSE, then forced his shoulders into the straps of his pack and followed her down the file as if her stiff back were a demand he could not refuse.
Before the day was done, he was an expert on that back. It never compromised; it never admitted a doubt about its authority, never offered the merest commiseration. Though his muscles tightened until they became as inarticulate as bone-though the aching rictus of his shoulders made him hunch in his pack like a cripple-though the leagues aggravated his sore feet until he hobbled along like a man harried by vultures-her back compelled him like an ultimatum: keep moving or go mad; I permit no other alternatives. And he could not deny her. She stalked ahead of him like a nightmare figure, and he followed as if she held the key to his existence.
Late in the morning, they left the end of the file, and found themselves on a heathered hillside almost directly north of the high, grim finger of Kevin's Watch. They could see the South Plains off to the west; and as soon as the file ended, the stream turned that way, flowing to some distant union with the Mithil. But Atiaran led Covenant still northward, weaving her way along fragmentary tracks and across unpathed leas which bordered the hills on her right.
To the west, the grasslands of the plains were stiff with bracken, purplish in the sunlight. And to the east, the hills rose calmly, cresting a few hundred feet higher than the path which Atiaran chose along their sides. In this middle ground, the heather alternated with broad swaths of bluegrass. The hillsides wore flowers and butterflies around thick copses of wattle and clusters of taller trees-oaks and sycamores, a few elms, and some gold-leaved trees-Atiaran called them "Gilden"-which looked like maples. All the colors-the trees, the heather, and bracken, the aliantha, the flowers, and the infinite azure sky-were vibrant with the eagerness of spring, lush and exuberant rebirth of the world.
But Covenant had no strength to take in such things. He was blind and deaf with exhaustion, pain, incomprehension. Like a penitent, he plodded on through the afternoon at Atiaran's behest.
At last the day came to an end. Covenant covered the final league staggering numbly, though he did not pass out on his feet as he had the previous day; and when Atiaran halted and dropped her pack, he toppled to the grass like a, felled tree. But his overstrained muscles twitched as if they were appalled; he could not hold them still without clenching. In involuntary restlessness, he helped Atiaran by unpacking the blankets while she cooked supper. During their meal, the sun set across the plains, streaking the grasslands with shadows and lavender; and when the stars came out he lay and watched them, trying with the help of springwine to make himself relax.
At last he faded into sleep. But his slumbers were troubled. He dreamed that he was trudging through a desert hour after hour, while a sardonic voice urged him to enjoy the freshness of the grass. The pattern ran obsessively in his mind until he felt that he was sweating anger. When the dawn came to wake him, he met it as if it were an affront to his sanity.
He found that his feet were already growing tougher, and his cut hand had healed almost completely. His overt pain was fading. But his nerves were no less alive. He could feel the ends of his socks with his toes, could feel the breeze on his fingers. Now the immediacy of these inexplicable sensations began to infuriate him. They were evidence of health, vitality-a wholeness he had spent long, miserable months of his life learning to live without-and they seemed to inundate him with terrifying implications. They seemed to deny the reality of his disease.
But that was impossible. It's one or the other, he panted fiercely. Not both. Either I'm a leper or I'm not. Either Joan divorced me or she never existed. There's no middle ground.
With an effort that made him grind his teeth, he averred, I'm a leper. I'm dreaming. That's a fact.
He could not bear the alternative. If he were dreaming, he might still be able to save his sanity, survive, endure. But if the Land were real, actual-- ah, then the long anguish of his leprosy was a dream, and he was mad already, beyond hope.
Any belief was better than that. Better to struggle for a sanity he could at least recognize than to submit to a "health" which surpassed all explanation.
He chewed the gristle of such thoughts for leagues as he trudged along behind Atiaran, but each argument brought him back to the same position. The mystery of his leprosy was all the mystery he could tolerate, accept as fact. It determined his response to every other question of credibility.
It made him stalk along at Atiaran's back as if he were ready to attack her at any provocation.
Nevertheless, he did receive one benefit from his dilemma. Its immediate presence and tangibility built a kind of wall between him and the particular fears and actions which had threatened him earlier. Certain memories of violence and blood did not recur. And without shame to goad it, his anger remained manageable, discrete. It did not impel him to rebel against Atiaran's uncompromising lead.
Throughout that third day, her erect, relentless form did not relax its compulsion. Up slopes and down hillsides, across glens, around thickets-along the western margin of the hills-she drew him onward against his fuming mind and recalcitrant flesh. But early in the afternoon she stopped suddenly, looked about her as if she had heard a distant cry of fear. Her unexpected anxiety startled Covenant, but before he could ask her what was the matter, she started grimly forward again.
Some time later she repeated her performance. This time, Covenant saw that she was smelling the air as if the breeze carried an erratic scent of evil. He sniffed, but smelled nothing. "What is it?" he asked. "Are we being followed again?"
She did not look at him. "Would that Trell were here," she breathed distractedly. "Perhaps he would know why the Land is so unquiet." Without explanation she swung hastening away northward once more.
That evening she halted earlier than usual. Late in the afternoon, he noticed that she was looking for something, a sign of some kind in the grass and trees; but she said nothing to explain herself, and so he could do nothing but watch and follow. Then without warning she turned sharply to the right, moved into a shallow valley between two hills. They had to skirt the edge of the valley to avoid a large patch of brambles which covered most of its bottom; and in a few hundred yards they came to a wide, thick copse in the northern hill. Atiaran walked around the copse, then unexpectedly vanished into it.
Dimly wondering, Covenant went to the spot where she had disappeared. There he was able to pick out a thin sliver of a path leading into the copse. He had to turn sideways to follow this path around some of
the trees, but in twenty feet he came to an open space like a chamber grown into the center of the woods.
The space was lit by light filtering through the walls, which were formed of saplings standing closely side by side in a rude rectangle; and a faint rustling breeze blew through them. But interwoven branches and leaves made a tight roof for the chamber. It was comfortably large enough for three or four people, and along each of its walls were grassy mounds like beds. In one corner stood a larger tree with a hollow center, into which shelves had been built, and these were laden with pots and flasks made of both wood and stone. The whole place seemed deliberately welcoming and cozy.
As Covenant looked around, Atiaran set her pack on one of the beds, and said abruptly, "This is a Waymeet." When he turned a face full of questions toward her, she sighed and went on, "A resting place for travelers. Here is food and drink and sleep for any who pass this way."
She moved away to inspect the contents of the shelves, and her busyness forced Covenant to hold onto his questions until a time when she might be more accessible. But while she replenished the supplies in her pack and prepared a meal, he sat and reflected that she was not ever likely to be accessible to him; and he was in no mood to be kept in ignorance. So after they had eaten, and Atiaran had settled herself for the night, he said with as much gentleness as he could manage, "Tell me more about this place. Maybe I'll need to know sometime."
She kept her face away from him, and lay silent in the gathering darkness for a while. She seemed to be waiting for courage, and when at last she spoke, she sighed only, "Ask."
Her delay made him abrupt. "Are there many places like this?"
"There are many throughout the Land."
"Why? Who sets them up?"
"The Lords caused them to be made. Revelstone is only one place, and the people live in many therefore the Lords sought a way to help travelers, so that people might come to Revelstone and to each other more easily."
"Well, who takes care of them? There's fresh food here."
Atiaran sighed again, as if she found talking to him arduous. The night had deepened; he could see nothing of her but a shadow as she explained tiredly, "Among the Demondim-spawn that survived the Desolation, there were some who recalled Loric Vilesilencer with gratitude. They turned against the ur-viles, and asked the Lords to give them a service to perform, as expiation for the sins of their kindred. These creatures, the Waynhim, care for the Waymeets -helping the trees to grow, providing food and drink. But the bond between men and Waynhim is fragile, and you will not see one. They serve for their own reasons, not for love of us-performing simple tasks to redeem the evil of their mighty lore."
The darkness in the chamber was now complete. In spite of his irritation, Covenant felt ready to sleep. He asked only one more question. "How did you find this place? Is there a map?"
"There is no map. A Waymeet is a blessing which one who travels accepts wherever it is found-a token of the health and hospitality of the Land. They may be found when they are needed. The Waynhim leave signs in the surrounding land."
Covenant thought he could hear a note of appreciation in her voice which clashed with her reluctance. The sound reminded him of her constant burden of conflicts-her sense of personal weakness in the face of the Land's strong need, her desires to both punish and preserve him. But he soon forgot such things as the image of Waymeets filled his reverie. Enfolded by the smell of the fresh grass on which he lay, he swung easily into sleep.
During the night, the weather changed. The morning came glowering under heavy clouds on a ragged wind out of the north, and Covenant met it with a massive frown that seemed to weigh down his forehead. He awoke before Atiaran called him. Though he had slept soundly in the security of the Waymeet, he felt as tired as if he had spent the whole night shouting at himself.
While Atiaran was preparing breakfast, he took out Triock's knife, then scanned the shelves and found a basin for water and a small mirror. He could not locate any soap-apparently the Waynhim relied on the same fine sand which he had used in Atiaran's home. So he braced himself to shave without lather. Triock's knife felt clumsy in his right hand, and he could not shake lurid visions of slitting his throat.
To marshal his courage, he studied himself in the mirror. His hair was tousled wildly; with his stubbled beard he looked like a rude prophet. His lips were thin and tight, like the chiseled mouth of an oracle, and there was grit in his gaunt eyes. All he needed to complete the picture was a touch of frenzy. Muttering silently, All in good time, he brought the knife to his cheek.
To his surprise, the blade felt slick on his skin, and it cut his whiskers without having to be scraped over them repeatedly. In a short time, he had given himself a shave which appeared adequate, at least by contrast, and he had not damaged himself. With a sardonic nod toward his reflection, he put the blade away in his pack and began eating his breakfast.
Soon he and Atiaran were ready to leave the Waymeet. She motioned for him to precede her; he went ahead a few steps along the path, then stopped to see what she was doing. As she left the chamber, she raised her head to the leafy ceiling, and said softly, "We give thanks for the Waymeet. The giving of this gift honors us, and in accepting it we return honor to the giver. We leave in Peace." Then she followed Covenant out of the copse.
When they reached the open valley, they found dark clouds piling over them out of the north. Tensely, Atiaran looked at the sky, smelled the sir; she seemed distraught by the coming rain. Her reaction made the boiling thunderheads appear ominous to Covenant, and when she turned sharply down the valley to resume her northward path, he hurried after her, calling out, "What's the matter?"
"Ill upon evil," she replied. "Do you not smell it? The Land is unquiet."
"What's wrong?"
"I do not know," she murmured so quietly that he could barely hear her. "There is a shadow in the air. And this rain-! Ali, the Land!"
"What's wrong with rain? Don't you get rain in the spring?"
"Not from the north," she answered over her shoulder. "The spring of the Land arises from the southwest. No, this rain comes straight from Gravin Threndor. The Cavewight Staff wrong-wielder tests his power-I feel it. We are too late."
She stiffened her pace into the claws of the wind, and Covenant pressed on behind her. As the first raindrops struck his forehead, he asked, "Does this Staff really run the weather?"
"The Old Lords did not use it so---they had no wish to violate the Land. But who can say what such power may accomplish?"
Then the full clouts of the storm hit them. The wind scourged the rain southward as if the sky were lashing out at them, at every defenseless living thing. Soon the hillsides were drenched with ferocity. The wind rent at the trees, tore, battered the grass; it struck daylight from the hills, buried the earth in preternatural night. In moments, Atiaran and Covenant were soaked, gasping through the torrent. They kept their direction by facing the dark fury, but they could see nothing of the terrain; they staggered down rough slopes, wandered helplessly into hip-deep streams, lurched headlong through thickets; they forced against the wind as if it were the current of some stinging limbo, some abyss running from nowhere mercilessly into nowhere. Yet Atiaran lunged onward erect, with careless determination, and the fear of losing her kept Covenant lumbering at her heels.
But he was wearying rapidly. With an extra effort that made his chest ache, he caught up to Atiaran, grabbed her shoulder, shouted in her ear, "Stop! We've got to stop!"
"No!" she screamed back. "We are too late! I do not dare!"
Her voice barely reached him through the howl of the wind. She started to pull away, and he tightened his grip on her robe, yelling, "No choice! We'll kill ourselves!" The rain thrashed brutally; for an instant he almost lost his hold. He got his other arm around her, tugged her streaming face close to his. "Shelter!" he cried. "We've got to stop!"
Through the water, her face had a drowning look as she answered, "Never! No time!" With a quick thrust of her weight and a swing of her arms, she broke his grip, tripped him to the ground. Before he could recover, she snatched up his right hand and began dragging him on through the grass and mud, hauling him like an unsupportable burden against the opposition of the storm. Her pull was so desperate that she had taken him several yards before he could heave upward and get his feet under him.
As he braced himself, her hold slipped off his hand, and she fell away from him. Shouting, "By hell, we're going to stop!" he leaped after her. But she eluded his grasp, ran unevenly away from him into the spite of the storm.
He stumbled along behind her. For several long moments, he slipped and scrambled through the flailing rain after her untouchable back, furious to get his hands on her. But some inner resource galvanized her strength beyond anything he could match; soon he failed at the pace. The rain hampered him as if he were trying to run on the bottom of a breaking wave.
Then a vicious skid sent him sledding down the hill with his face full of mud. When he looked up again through the rain and dirt, Atiaran had vanished into the dark storm as if she were in terror of him, dreaded his touch.
Fighting his way to his feet, Covenant roared at the rampant clouds, "Hellfire! You can't do this to me!"
Without warning, just as his fury peaked, a huge white flash exploded beside him. He felt that a bolt of lightning had struck his left hand.
The blast threw him up the hill to his right. For uncounted moments, he lay dazed, conscious only of the power of the detonation and the flaming pain in his hand. His wedding ring seemed to be on fire. But when he recovered enough to look, he could see no mark on his fingers, and the pain faded away while he was still hunting for its source.
He shook his head, thrust himself into a sitting position. There were no signs of the blast anywhere around him. He was numbly aware that something had changed, but in his confusion he could not identify
what it was. He climbed painfully to his feet. After only a moment, he spotted Atiaran lying on the hillside twenty yards ahead of him. His head felt unbalanced with bewilderment, but he moved cautiously toward her, concentrating on his equilibrium. She lay on her back, apparently unhurt, and stared at him as he approached. When he reached her, she said in wonderment, "What have you done?"
The sound of her voice helped focus his attention.
He was able to say without slurring, "Me? I didn't -nothing."
Atiaran came slowly to her feet. Standing in front of him, she studied him gravely, uncertainly, as she said, "Something has aided us. See, the storm is less. And the wind is changed-it blows now as it should.
Gravin Threndor no longer threatens. Praise the Earth, Unbeliever, if this is not your doing."
"Of course it's not my doing," murmured Covenant.
"I don't run the weather." There was no asperity in his tone. He was taken aback by his failure to recognize the change in the storm for himself. Atiaran had told the simple truth. The wind had shifted and dropped considerably. The rain fell steadily, but without fury; now it was just a good, solid, spring rain.
Covenant shook his head again. He felt strangely unable to understand. But when Atiaran said gently, "Shall we go?" he heard a note of unwilling respect in her voice. She seemed to believe that he had in
fact done something to the storm.
Numbly, he mumbled, "Sure," and followed her onward again.
They walked in clean rain for the rest of the day. Covenant's sense of mental dullness persisted, and the only outside influences that penetrated him were wetness and cold. Most of the day passed without his notice in one long, drenched push against the cold. Toward evening, he had regained enough of himself to be glad when Atiaran found a Waymeet, and he checked over his body carefully for any hidden injuries while his clothes dried by the graveling. But he still felt dazed by what had happened. He could not shake the odd impression that whatever force had changed the fury of the storm had altered him also.
The next day broke clear, crisp, and glorious, and he and Atiaran left the Waymeet early in the new spring dawn. After the strain of the previous day, Covenant felt keenly alert to the joyous freshness of the air and the sparkle of dampness on the grass, the sheen on the heather and the bursting flavor of the treasure-berries. The Land around him struck him as if he had never noticed its beauty before. Its vitality seemed curiously tangible to his senses. He felt that he could see spring fructifying within the trees, the grass, the flowers, hear the excitement of the calling birds, smell the newness of the buds and the cleanliness of the air.
Then abruptly Atiaran stopped and looked about her. A grimace of distaste and concern tightened her features as she sampled the breeze. She moved her head around intently, as if she were trying to locate the source of a threat.
Covenant followed her example, and as he did so, a thrill of recognition ran through him. He could tell that there was indeed something wrong in the air, something false. It did not arise in his immediate vicinity-the scents of the trees and turf and flowers, the lush afterward of rain, were all as they should be-but it lurked behind those smells like something uneasy, out of place, unnatural in the distance. He understood instinctively that it was the odor of illthe odor of premeditated disease.
A moment later, the breeze shifted; the odor vanished. But that ill smell had heightened his perceptions; the contrast vivified his sense of the vitality of his surroundings. With an intuitive leap, he grasped the change which had taken place within him or for him. In some way that completely amazed him, his senses had gained a new dimension. He looked at the grass, smelled its freshness-and saw its verdancy, its springing life, its fitness. Jerking his eyes to a nearby aliantha, he received an impression of potency, health, that dumbfounded him.
His thoughts reeled, groped, then suddenly clarified around the image of health. He was seeing health, smelling natural fitness and vitality, hearing the true exuberance of spring. Health was as vivid around him as if the spirit of the Land's life had become palpable, incarnate. It was as if he had stepped without warning into an altogether different universe. Even Atiaran -- she was gazing at his entrancement with puzzled surprise-was manifestly healthy, though her life was complicated by uneasiness, fatigue, pain, resolution.
By hell, he mumbled. Is my leprosy this obvious to her? Then why doesn't she understand-? He turned away from her stare, hunted for some way to test both his eyes and hers. After a moment, he spotted near the top of a hill a Gilden tree that seemed to have something wrong with it. In every respect that he could identify, specify, the tree appeared normal, healthy, yet it conveyed a sense of inner rot, an unexpected pang of sorrow, to his gaze. Pointing at it, he asked Atiaran what she saw.
Soberly, she replied, "I am not one of the lillianrill, but I can see that the Gilden dies. Some blight has stricken its heart. Did you not see such things before?"
He shook his head.
"Then how does the world from which you come live?" She sounded dismayed by the prospect of a place in which health itself was invisible.
He shrugged off her question. He wanted to challenge her, find out what she saw in him. But then he remembered her saying, You are closed to me. Now he understood her comment, and the comprehension gave him a feeling of relief. The privacy of his own illness was intact, safe. He motioned her northward again, and when after a moment she started on her way, he followed her with pleasure. For a long time he forgot himself in the sight of so much healthiness.
Gradually, as the day -moved through afternoon into gloaming and the onset of night, he adjusted to seeing health behind the colors and forms which met his eyes. Twice more his nostrils had caught the elusive odor of wrongness, but he could not find it anywhere near the creek by which Atiaran chose to make camp. In its absence he thought that he would sleep peacefully.
But somehow a rosy dream of soul health and beauty became a nightmare in which spirits threw off their bodies and revealed themselves to be ugly, rotten, contemptuous. He was glad to wake up, glad even to take the risk of shaving without the aid of a mirror.
On the sixth day, the smell of wrong became persistent, and it grew stronger as Atiaran and Covenant worked their way north along the hills. A brief spring shower dampened their clothes in the middle of the morning, but it did not wash the odor from the air. That smell made Covenant uneasy, whetted his anxiety until he seemed to have a cold blade of dread poised over his heart.
Still he could not locate, specify, the odor. It keened in him behind the bouquet of the grass and the tangy bracken and the aliantha, behind the loveliness of the vital hills, like the reek of a rotting corpse just beyond the range of his nostrils.
Finally he could not endure it any longer in silence. He drew abreast of Atiaran, and asked, "Do you smell it?"
Without a glance at him, she returned heavily, "Yes, Unbeliever. I smell it. It becomes clear to me."
"What does it mean?"
"It means that we are walking into peril. Did you not expect it?"
Thinking, Hellfire! Covenant rephrased his question. "But what does it come from? What's causing it?"
"How can I say?" she countered. "I am no oracle."
Covenant caught himself on the edge of an angry retort. With an effort, he kept his temper. "Then what is it?"
"It is murder," Atiaran replied flatly, and quickened her pace to pull away from him. Do not ask me to forget, her back seemed to say, and he stumped fuming after it. Cold anxiety inched closer to his heart.
By midafternoon, he felt that his perception of wrongness was sharpening at almost every step. His eyes winced up and down the hills, as though he expected at any moment to see the source of the smell. His sinuses ached from constantly tasting the odor. But there was nothing for him to perceive-nothing but Atiaran's roaming path through the dips and hollows and valleys and outcroppings of the hills-nothing but healthy trees and thickets and flowers and verdant grass, the blazonry of the Earth's spring and nothing but the intensifying threat of something ill in the air. It was a poignant threat, and he felt obscurely that the cause would be worth bewailing.
The sensation of it increased without resolution for some time. But then a sudden change in the tension of Atiaran's back warned Covenant to brace himself scant instants before she hissed at him to stop. She had just rounded the side of a hill far enough to see into the hollow beyond it. For a moment she froze, crouching slightly and peering into the hollow. Then she began running down the hill.
At once, Covenant followed. In three strides, he reached the spot where she had halted. Beyond him, in the bottom of the hollow, stood a single copse like an eyot in a broad glade. He could see nothing amiss. But his sense of smell jabbered at him urgently, and Atiaran was dashing straight toward the copse. He sprinted after her.
She stopped short just on the east side of the trees. Quivering feverishly, she glared about her with an expression of terror and hatred, as if she wanted to enter the copse and did not have the courage. Then she cried out, aghast, "Waynhim? Melenkurion! Ah, by the Seven, what evil!"
When Covenant reached her side, she was staring a silent scream at the trees. She held her hands clasped together at her mouth, and her shoulders shook.
As soon as he looked at the copse, he saw a thin path leading into it. Impulsively, he moved forward, plunged between the trees. In five steps, he was in an open space much like the other Waymeets he had seen. This chamber was round, but it had the same tree walls, branch-woven roof, beds, and shelves.
But the walls were spattered with blood, and a figure lay in the center of the floor.
Covenant gasped as he saw that the figure was not human.
Its outlines were generally manlike, though the torso was inordinately long, and the limbs were short, matched in length, indicating that the creature could both stand erect and run on its hands and feet. But the face was entirely alien to Covenant. A long, flexible neck joined the hairless head to the body; two pointed ears perched near the top of the skull on either side'; the mouth was as thin as a mere slit in the flesh. And there were no eyes. Two gaping nostrils surrounded by a thick, fleshy membrane filled the center of the face. The head had no other features.
Driven through the center of the creature's chest -pinning it to the ground-was a long iron spike.
The chamber stank of violence so badly that in a few breaths Covenant felt about to suffocate. He wanted to flee. He was a leper; even dead things were dangerous to him. But he forced himself to remain still while he sorted out one impression. On seeing the creature, his first thought had been that the Land was rid of something loathsome. But as he gritted himself, his eyes and nose corrected him. The wrongness which assailed his senses came from the killing from the spike-not from the creature. Its flesh had a hue of ravaged health; it had been natural, right-a proper part of the life of the Land Gagging on the stench of the crime, Covenant turned and fled.
As he broke out into the sunlight, he saw Atiaran already moving away to the north, almost out of the hollow. He needed no urging to hurry after her; his bones ached to put as much distance as possible between himself and the desecrated Waymeet. He hastened in her direction as if there were fangs snapping at his heels.
For the rest of the day, he found relief in putting leagues behind him. The edge of the unnatural smell was slowly blunted as they hurried onward. But it did not fade below a certain level. When he and Atiaran were forced by fatigue and darkness to stop for the night, he felt sure that there was uneasiness still ahead -that the killer of the Waynhim was moving invidiously to the north of them. Atiaran seemed to share his conviction; she asked him if he knew how to use the knife he carried.
After sleep had eluded him for some time, he made himself ask her, "Shouldn't we have-buried it?"
She answered softly from her shadowed bed across the low light of the graveling, "They would not thank our interference. They will take care of their own. But the fear is on me that they may break their bond with the Lords because of this."
That thought gave Covenant a chill he could not explain, and he lay sleepless for half the night under the cold mockery of the stars.
The next day dawned on short rations for the travelers. Atiaran had been planning to replenish her supplies at a Waymeet the previous day, so now she had no springwine left and little bread or staples. However, they were in no danger of going hungry -treasure-berries were plentiful along their path. But they had to start without warm food to steady them after the cold, uncomforting night. And they had to travel in the same direction that the killer of the Waynhim had taken. Covenant found himself stamping angrily into the dawn as if he sensed that the murder had been intended for him. For the first time in several days, he allowed himself to think of Drool and Lord Foul. He knew that either of them was capable of killing a Waynhim, even of killing it gratuitously. And the Despiser, at least, might easily know where he was.
But the day passed without mishap. The dim, constant uneasiness in the air grew no worse and aliantha abounded. As the leagues passed, Covenant's anger lost its edge. He relaxed into contemplation of the health around him, looked with undiminished wonder at the trees, the magisterial oaks and dignified elms, the comforting spread of the Gilden, the fine filigree of the mimosas, the spry saplings of wattle -and at the calm old contours of the hills, lying like slumberous heads to the reclining earth of the western plains. Such things gave him a new sense of the pulse and pause, the climbing sap and the still rock of the Land. In contrast, the trailing ordure of death seemed both petty insignificant beside the vast abundant vitality of the hills-and vile, like an act of cruelty done to a child.
The next morning, Atiaran changed her course, veering somewhat eastward, so that she and Covenant climbed more and more into the heart of the hills. They took a crooked trail, keeping primarily to valleys that wandered generally northward between the hills. And when the sun was low enough to cast the eastern hillsides into shadow, the travelers came in sight of Soaring Woodhelven.
Their approach gave Covenant a good view of the tree village from some distance away across a wide glade. He judged the tree to be nearly four hundred feet high, and a good thirty broad at the base. There were no branches on the trunk until forty or fifty feet above the ground, then abruptly huge limbs spread out horizontally from the stem, forming in outline a half-oval with a flattened tip. The whole tree was so thickly branched and leaved that most of the village was hidden; but Covenant could see a few ladders between the branches and along the trunk; and in some tight knots on the limbs he thought he could make out the shapes of dwellings. If any people were moving through the foliage,
they were -so well camouflaged that he could not discern them.
"That is Soaring Woodhelven," said Atiaran, "a home for the people of the lillianrill, as Mithil Stonedown is a home for those of the rhadhamaerl. I have been here once, on my returning from the Loresraat. The Woodhelvennin are a comely folk, though I do not understand their wood-lore. They will give us rest and food, and perhaps help as well. It is said, `Go to the rhadhamaerl for truth, and the lillianrill for counsel.' My need for counsel is sore upon me. Come."
She led Covenant across the glade to the base of the great tree. They had to pass around the roughbarked trunk to the northwest curve, and there they found a large natural opening in the hollow stem. The inner cavity was not deep; it was only large enough to hold a spiral stairway. Above the first thick limb was another opening, from which ladders began their way upward.
The sight gave Covenant a quiver of his old fear of heights, almost forgotten since his ordeal on the stairs of Kevin's Watch. He did not want to have to climb those ladders.
But it appeared that he would not have to climb. The opening to the trunk was barred with a heavy wooden gate, and there was no one to open it. In fact, the whole place seemed too quiet and dark for a human habitation. Dusk was gathering, but no home glimmers broke through the overhanging shadow, and no gloaming calls between families interrupted the silence.
Covenant glanced at Atiaran, and saw that she was puzzled. Resting her hands on the bars of the gate, she said, "This is not well, Thomas Covenant. When last I came here, there were children in the glade, people on the stair, and no gate at the door. Something is amiss. And yet I sense no great evil. There is no more ill here than elsewhere along our path."
Stepping back from the gate, she raised her head and called, "Hail! Soaring Woodhelven! We are travelers, people of the Land! Our way is long-our future dark! What has become of you?" When no answering shout came, she went on in exasperation, "I have been here before! In those days, it was said that Woodhelvennin hospitality had no equal! Is this your friendship to the Land?"
Suddenly, they heard a light scattering fall behind them. Spinning around, they found themselves encircled by seven or eight men gripping smooth wooden daggers. Instinctively, Atiaran and Covenant backed away. As the men advanced, one of them said, "The meaning of friendship changes with the times. We have seen darkness, and heard dark tidings. We will be sure of strangers"
A torch flared in the hands of the man who had spoken. Through the glare, Covenant got his first look at the Woodhelvennin. They were all tall, slim, and lithe, with fair hair and light eyes. They dressed in cloaks of woodland colors, and the fabric seemed to cling to their limbs, as if to avoid snagging on branches. Each man held a pointed dagger of polished wood which gleamed dully in the torchlight.
Covenant was at a loss, but Atiaran gathered her robe about her and answered with stern pride, "Then be sure. I am Atiaran Trell-mate of Mithil Stonedown. This is Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and message-bearer to the Lords. We come in friendship and need, seeking safety and help. I did not know that it is your custom to make strangers prisoner."
The man who held the torch stepped forward and bowed seriously. "When we are sure, we will ask your pardon. Until that time, you must come with me to a place where you may be examined. We have seen strange tokens, and see more now." He nodded at Covenant. "`We would make no mistake, either in trust or in doubt. Will you accompany me?"
"Very well," Atiaran sighed. "But you would not be treated so in Mithil Stonedown."
The man replied, "Let the Stonedownors taste our troubles before they despise our caution. Now, come behind me." He moved forward to open the gate.
At the command, Covenant balked. He was not
prepared to go climbing around a tall tree in the dark. It would have been bad enough in the light, when he could have seen what he was doing, but the very thought of taking the risk at night made his pulse hammer in his forehead. Stepping away from Atiaran, he said with a quaver he could not repress, "Forget it."
Before he could react, two of the men grabbed his arms. He tried to twist away, but they held him, pulled his hands up into the torchlight. For one stark moment, the Woodhelvennin stared at his hand, at the ring on his left and the scar on his right-as if he were some kind of ghoul. Then the man with the torch snapped, "Bring him."
"No!" Covenant clamored. "You don't understand. I'm not good at heights. I'll fall." As they wrestled him toward the gate, he shouted, "Hellfire! You're trying to kill me!"
His captors halted momentarily. He heard a series of shouts, but in his confused, angry panic he did not understand. Then the leader said, "If you do not climb well, you will not be asked to climb."
The next moment, the end of a rope fell beside Covenant. Instantly, two more men lashed his wrists to the line. Before he realized what was happening, the rope sprang taut. He was hauled into the air like a sack of miscellaneous helplessness.
He thought he heard a shout of protest from Atiaran, but he could not be sure. Crying silently, Bloody hell! he tensed his shoulders against the strain and stared wildly up into the darkness. He could not see anyone drawing up the rope in the last glimmering of the torch, the line seemed to stretch up into an abyss-and that made him doubly afraid.
Then the light below him vanished.
The next moment, a low rustling of leaves told him that he had reached the level of the first branches. He saw a yellow glow through the upper opening of the tree's stairwell. But the rope hauled him on upward into the heights of the village.
His own movements made him swing slightly, so that at odd intervals he brushed against the leaves.
But that was his only contact with the tree. He saw no lights, heard no voices; the deep black weights of the mighty limbs slid smoothly past him as if he were being dragged into the sky.
Soon both his shoulders throbbed sharply, and his arms went numb. With his head craned upward, he gaped into a lightless terror and moaned as if he were drowning, Hellfire! Ahh!
Then without warning his movement stopped. Before he could brace himself, a torch flared, and he found himself level with three men who were standing on a limb. In the sudden light, they looked identical to the men who had captured him, but one of them had a small circlet of leaves about his head. The other two considered Covenant for a moment, then reached out and gripped his shirt, pulling him toward their limb. As the solid branch struck his feet, the rope slackened; letting his arms drop.
His wrists were still tied together, but he tried to get a hold on one of the men, keep himself from falling off the limb. His arms were dead; he could not move them. The darkness stretched below him like a hungry beast. With a gasp, he lunged toward the men, striving to make them save him. They grappled him roughly. He refused to bear his own weight, forced them to carry and drag him down the limb until they came to a wide gap in the trunk. There the center of the stem was hollowed out to form a large chamber, and Covenant dropped heavily to the floor, shuddering with relief.
Shortly, a rising current of activity began around him. He paid no attention to it; he kept his eyes shut to concentrate on the hard stability of the floor, and on the pain of blood returning to his hands and arms. The hurt was excruciating, but he endured it in clenched silence. Soon his hands were tingling, and his fingers felt thick, hot. He flexed them, curled them into claws. Through his teeth, he muttered to the fierce rhythm of his heart, Hellfire. Hell and blood.
He opened his eyes.
He was lying on polished wood at the center of the myriad concentric circles of the tree trunk. The age rings made the rest of the room seem to focus toward him as if he were sprawled on a target. His arms felt unnaturally inarticulate, but he forced them to thrust him into a sitting position. Then he looked at his hands. His wrists were raw from the cut of the rope, but they were not bleeding.
Bastards!
He raised his head and glowered around him.
The chamber was about twenty feet wide, and seemed to fill the whole inside diameter of the trunk. The only opening was the one through which he had stumbled, and he could see darkness outside; but the room was brightly lit by torches set into the walls-torches which burned smokelessly, and did not appear to be consumed. The polished walls gleamed as if they were burnished, but the ceiling, high above the floor, was rough, untouched wood.
Five Woodhelvennin stood around Covenant in the hollow-three men, including the one wearing the circlet of leaves, and two women. They all were dressed in similar cloaks which clung to their outlines, though the colors varied, and all were taller than Covenant. Their tallness seemed threatening, so he got slowly to his feet, lowering the pack from his shoulders as he stood.
A moment later, the man who had led Covenant's captors on the ground entered the chamber, followed by Atiaran. She appeared unharmed, but weary and depressed, as though the climb and the distrust had sapped her strength. When she saw Covenant, she moved to take her stand beside him.
One of the women said, "Only two, Soranal?"
"Yes," Atiaran's guard answered. "We watched, and there were no others as they crossed the south glade. And our scouts have not reported any other strangers in the hills."
"Scouts?" asked Atiaran. "I did not know that scouts were needed among the people of the Land."
The woman took a step forward and replied, "Atiaran Trell-mate, the folk of Mithil Stonedown have been known to us since our return to the Land
in the new age. And there are those among us who remember your visit here. We know our friends, and the value of friendship."
"Then in what way have we deserved this treatment?" Atiaran demanded. "We came in search of friends."
The woman did not answer Atiaran's question directly. "Because we are all people of the Land," she said, "and because our peril is a peril for all, I will attempt to ease the sting of our discourtesy by explaining our actions. We in this heartwood chamber are the Heers of Soaring Woodhelven, the leaders of our people. I am Llaura daughter of Annamar. Here also"-she indicated each individual with a nod "are Omournil daughter of Mournil, Soranal son of Thiller, Padrias son of Mill, Malliner son of Veinnin, and Baradakas, Hirebrand of the lillianrill." This last was the man wearing the circlet of leaves. "We made the decision of distrust, and will give our reasons.
"I see that you are impatient." A taste of bitterness roughened her voice. "Well, I will not tire you with the full tale of the blighting wind which has blown over us from time to time from Gravin Threndor. I will not describe the angry storms, or show you the body of the three-winged bird that died atop our Woodhelven, or discuss the truth of the rumors of murder which have reached our ears. By the Seven! There are angry songs that should be sung-but I will not sing them now. This I will tell you: all servants of the Gray Slayer are not dead. It is our belief that a Raver has been among us."
That name carried a pang of danger that made Covenant look rapidly about him, trying to locate the peril. For an instant, he did not comprehend. But then he noticed how Atiaran stiffened at Llaura's words-saw the jumping knot at the corner of her jaw, felt the heightened fear in her, though she said nothing-and he understood. The Woodhelvennin feared that he and she might be Ravers.
Without thinking, he snapped, "That's ridiculous."
The Heers ignored him. After a short pause, Soranal continued Llaura's explanation. "Two days past, in the high sun of afternoon, when our people were busy at their crafts and labors, and the children were playing in the upper branches of the Tree, a stranger came to Soaring Woodhelven. Two days earlier, the last ill storm out of Mount Thunder had broken suddenly and turned into good-and on the day the stranger came our hearts were glad, thinking that a battle we knew not of had been won for the Land. He wore the appearance of a Stonedownor, and said his name was Jehannum. We welcomed him with the hospitality which is the joy of the Land. We saw no reason to doubt him, though the children shrank from him with unwonted cries and fears. Alas for us-the young saw more clearly than the old.
"He passed among us with dark hints and spite in his mouth, casting sly ridicule on our crafts and customs. And we could not answer him. But we remembered Peace, and did nothing for a day.
"In that time, Jehannum's hints turned to open foretelling of doom. So at last we called him to the heartwood chamber and the meeting of the Heers. We heard the words he chose to speak, words full of glee and the reviling of the Land. Then our eyes saw more deeply, and we offered him the test of the lomillialor."
"You know of the High Wood, lomillialor-do you not, Atiaran?" Baradakas spoke for the first time. "There is much in it like the orcrest of the rhadhamaerl. It is an offspring of the One Tree, from which the Staff of Law itself was made."
"But we had no chance to make the test," Soranal resumed. "When Jehannum saw the High Wood, he sprang away from us and escaped. We gave pursuit, but he had taken us by surprise-we were too full of quiet, not ready for such evils-and his fleetness far surpassed ours. He eluded us, and made his way toward the east."
He sighed as he concluded, "In the one day which has passed since that time, we have begun relearning the defense of the Land."
After a moment, Atiaran said quietly, "I hear you. Pardon my anger -I spoke in haste and ignorance.
But surely now you can see that we are no friends of the Gray Slayer."
"We see much in you, Atiaran Trell-mate," said Llaura, her eyes fixed keenly on the Stonedownor, "much sorrow and much courage. But your companion is closed to us. It may be that we will need to emprison this Thomas Covenant."
"Melenkurion!" hissed Atiaran. "Do not dare! Do you not know? Have you not looked at him?"
At this, a murmur of relief passed among the Heers, a murmur which accented their tension. Stepping toward Atiaran, Soranal extended his right hand, palm forward, in the salute of welcome, and said, "We have looked-looked and heard. We trust you, Atiaran Trell-mate. You have spoken a name which no Raver would call upon to save a companion." He took her by the arm and drew her away from Covenant, out of the center of the chamber.
Without her at his shoulder, Covenant felt suddenly exposed, vulnerable. For the first time, he sensed how much he had come to depend upon her presence, her guidance, if not her support. But he was in no mood to meet threats passively. He poised himself on the balls of his feet, ready to move in any direction; and his eyes shifted quickly among, the faces that stared at him from the gleaming walls of the chamber.
"Jehannum predicted many things," said Llaura, "but one especially you should be told. He said that a great evil in the semblance of Berek Halfhand walked the hills toward us out of the south. And here-" She pointed a pale arm at Covenant, her voice rising sternly as she spoke. "Here is an utter stranger to the Land-half unhanded on his right, and on his left bearing a ring of white gold. Beyond doubt carrying messages to the Lords-messages of doom!"
With a pleading intensity, Atiaran said, "Do not presume to judge. Remember the Oath. You are not Lords. And dark words may be warnings as well as prophecies. Will you trust the word of a Raver?"
Baradakas shrugged slightly. "It is not the message we judge. Our test is for the man." Reaching behind him, he lifted up a smooth wooden rod three feet long from which all the bark had been stripped. He held it by the middle gently, reverently. "This is lomillialor." As he said the name, the wood glistened as if its clear grain were moist with dew.
What the hell is this? Covenant tried to balance himself for whatever was coming.
But the Hirebrand's next move caught him by surprise. Baradakas swung his rod and lofted it toward the Unbeliever.
He jerked aside and clutched at the lomillialor with his right hand. But he did not have enough fingers to get a quick grip on it; it slipped away from him, dropped to the floor with a wooden click that seemed unnaturally loud in the hush of the chamber.
For an instant, everyone remained still, frozen while they absorbed the meaning of what they had seen. Then, in unison, the Heers uttered their verdict with all the finality of a death sentence.
"The High Wood rejects him. He is a wrong in the Land."

Ten: The Celebration of Spring


IN one fluid motion, Baradakas drew a club from his cloak and raised it as he moved toward Covenant.
Covenant reacted instinctively, defensively. Before the Hirebrand could reach him, he stooped and snatched up the lomillialor rod with his left hand. As Baradakas swung the club at his head, he slashed the Hirebrand's arm with the rod.
In a shower of white sparks, the club sprang into splinters. Baradakas was flung back as if he had been blasted away by an explosion.
The force of the hit vibrated through Covenant's hand to his elbow, and his fingers were struck momentarily numb. The rod started to slip from his hand. He gaped at it, thinking, What the hell-?
But then the mute astonishment of the Heers, and the Hirebrand's crumpled form, steadied him. Test me? he rasped. Bastards. He took the rod in his right hand, holding it by the middle as Baradakas had done. Its glistening wood felt slick; it gave him a sensation of slippage, as if it were oozing from his grasp, though the wood did not actually move. As he gripped it, he glared around at the Heers, put all the anger their treatment had sparked in him into his gaze. "Now why don't you tell me one more time about how this thing rejects me."
Soranal and Llaura stood on either side of Atiaran, with Malliner opposite them against the wall. Omournil and Padrias were bent over the fallen Hirebrand. As Covenant surveyed them, Atiaran faced him grimly. "In the older age," she said, "when High Lord Kevin trusted the Gray Slayer, he was given priceless gifts of orcrest and lomillialor. The tale says that these gifts were soon lost-but while the Gray Slayer possessed them they did not reject him. It is possible for Despite to wear the guise of truth. Perhaps the wild magic surpasses truth."
Thanks a lot! Covenant glowered at her. What're you trying to do to me?
In a pale voice, Llaura replied, "That is the tale. But we are only Woodhelvennin-not Lords. Such matters are beyond us. Never in the memory of our people has a test of truth struck down a Hirebrand of the lillianrill. What is the song? `he will save or damn the Earth.' Let us pray that we will not find damnation for our distrust." Extending an unsteady hand toward Covenant in the salute of welcome, she said, "Hail, Unbeliever! Pardon our doubts, and be welcome in Soaring Woodhelven."
For an instant, Covenant faced her with a bitter retort twisting his lips. But he found when he met her eyes that he could see the sincerity of her apology. The perception abashed his vehemence. With conflicting intentions, he muttered, "Forget it."
Llaura and Soranal both bowed as if he had accepted her apology. Then they turned to watch as Baradakas climbed dazedly to his feet. His hands pulled at his face as if it were covered with cobwebs, but he assured Omournil and Padrias that he was unharmed. With a mixture of wonder and dismay in his eyes, he also saluted Covenant.
Covenant responded with a dour nod. He did not wait for the Hirebrand to ask; he handed the lomillialor to Baradakas, and was glad to be rid of its disquieting, insecure touch.
Baradakas received the rod and smiled at it crookedly, as if it had witnessed his defeat. Then he slipped it away into his cloak. Turning his smile toward Covenant, he said, "Unbeliever, our presences are no longer needed here. You have not eaten, and the weariness of your journey lies heavily upon you. Will you accept the hospitality of my house?"
The invitation surprised Covenant; for a moment he hesitated, trying to decide whether or not he could trust the Hirebrand. Baradakas appeared calm, unhostile, but his smile was more complex than Llaura's apology. But then Covenant reflected that if the question were one of trust, he would be safer with Baradakas alone than with all the Heers together. Stiffly, he said, "You honor me."
The Hirebrand bowed. "In accepting a gift you honor the giver." He looked around at the other Woodhelvennin, and when they nodded their approval, he turned and moved out of the heartwood chamber.
Covenant glanced toward Atiaran, but she was already talking softly to Soranal. Without further delay, he stepped out onto the broad limb beside Baradakas.
The night over the great tree was now scattered with lights-the home fires of the Woodhelvennin. They illuminated the fall far down through the branches, but did not reach to the ground. Involuntarily, Covenant clutched at Baradakas' shoulder.
"It is not far," the Hirebrand said softly. "Only up to the next limb. I will come behind you-you will not fall."
Cursing silently through his teeth, Covenant gripped the rungs of the ladder. He wanted to retreat, go back to the solidity of the heartwood chamber, but pride and anger prevented him. And the rungs felt secure, almost adhesive, to his fingers. When Baradakas placed a reassuring hand on his back, he started awkwardly upward.
As Baradakas had promised, the next limb was not far away. Soon Covenant reached another broad branch. A few steps out from the trunk, it forked, and in the fork sat the Hirebrand's home. Holding Baradakas' shoulders for support, he gained the doorway, crossed the threshold as if he were being blown in by a gust of relief.
He was in a neat, two-roomed dwelling formed entirely from the branches of the tree. Interwoven limbs made part of the floor and all the walls, including the partition between the rooms. And the ceiling was a dome of twigs and leaves. Along one wall of the first room, broad knees of wood grew into the chamber like chairs, and a bunk hung opposite them. The place had a warm, clean atmosphere, an ambience of devotion to lore, that Covenant found faintly disturbing, like a reminder that the Hirebrand could be a dangerous man.
While Covenant scanned the room, Baradakas set torches in each of the outer walls and lit them by rubbing his hands over their ends and murmuring softly. Then he rummaged around in the far room for a moment, and returned carrying a tray laden with slabs of bread and cheese, a large bunch of grapes, and a wooden jug. He set a small, three-legged table between two of the chairs, put the tray on it, and motioned for Covenant to sit down.
At the sight of the food, Covenant discovered that he was hungry; he had eaten nothing but aliantha for the past two days. He watched while Baradakas bowed momentarily over the food. Then he seated himself. Following his host's example, he made sandwiches with cheese and grapes between slices of fresh bread, and helped himself liberally to the jug of springwine. In the first rush of eating, he said nothing, saving his attention for the food.
But he did not forget who his host was, what had happened between them.
Leaving the springwine with Covenant, Baradakas cleared away the remains of the meal. When he returned after storing his food in the far room, he said, "Now, Unbeliever. In what other way may I give you comfort?"
Covenant took a deep draft of springwine, then replied as casually as he could, "Give an answer. You were ready to split my head open-back there. And it looked as if you got quite a jolt from that-from that High Wood. Why did you invite me here?"
For a moment, Baradakas hesitated, as if pondering how much he should say. Then he reached into his back room, picked up a smooth staff nearly six feet long, and sat down on the bed across from Covenant. As he spoke, he began polishing the white wood of the staff with a soft cloth. "There are many reasons, Thomas Covenant. You required a place to sleep, and my home is nearer to the heartwood chamber than any other-for one who dislikes heights. And neither you nor I are necessary for the consideration of counsel and help which will be done this night. Atiaran knows the Land-she will say all that need be said concerning your journey. And both Soranal and Llaura are able to give any help she may ask."
As he looked 'across the room at the Hirebrand's working hands and light, penetrating eyes, Covenant had the odd feeling that his test had been resumed that the encounter of the lomillialor had only begun Baradakas' examining. But the springwine unknotted his fears and tensions; he was not anxious. Steadily, he said, "Tell me more."
"I also intended that my offer of hospitality should be an apology. I was prepared to injure you, and that violation of my Oath of Peace needs reparation. Had you shown yourself to be a servant of the Gray Slayer, it would have sufficed to capture you. And injury might have deprived the Lords of a chance to examine you. So in that way I was wrong. And became more wrong still when you lifted the lomillialor, and its fire struck me. I hope to amend my folly."
Covenant recognized the Hirebrand's frankness, but his sense of being probed sharpened rather than faded. He held his host's eyes as he said, "You still haven't answered my question."
In an unsurprised tone, Baradakas countered, "Are there other reasons? What do you see in me?"
"You're still testing me," Covenant growled.
The Hirebrand nodded slowly. "Perhaps. Perhaps I am." He got to his feet and braced one end of the staff against the floor as he gave a last touch to its polish. Then he said, "See, Thomas Covenant-I have made a staff for you. When I began it, I believed it was for myself. But now I know otherwise. Take it. It may serve you when help and counsel fail." To the brief question in Covenant's eyes, he replied, "No, this is not High Wood. But it is good nonetheless. Let me give it to you."
Covenant shook his head. "Finish your testing."
Suddenly, Baradakas raised the staff and struck the wood under his feet a hard blow. For an instant, the entire limb shook as if a gale had come up; the smaller branches thrashed, and the dwelling tossed like a chip on an angry wave. Covenant feared that the tree was falling, and he gripped his chair in apprehension. But almost immediately the violence passed. Baradakas leveled his pale eyes at Covenant and whispered, "Then hear me, Unbeliever. Any test of truth is no greater than the one who gives it. And I have felt your power. In all the memory of the lillianrill, no Hirebrand has ever been struck by the High Wood. We are the friends of the One Tree, not its foes. But beside you I am as weak as a child. I cannot force the truth from you. In spite of my testing, you might be the Gray Slayer himself, come to turn all the life of the Land to ashes."
Incensed by the suggestion, Covenant spat, "That's ridiculous."
Baradakas stepped closer, drove his probing gaze
deep into Covenant's eyes. Covenant squirmed; he could feel the Hirebrand exploring parts of him that he wanted to protect, keep hidden. What has that bastard Foul to do with me? he demanded bitterly. I didn't exactly choose to be his errand boy.
Abruptly, Baradakas' eyes widened, and he fell back across the room as if he had seen something of astonishing power. He caught himself on the bed, sat there for a moment while he watched his hands tremble on the staff. Then he said carefully, "True. One day I may be wise enough to know what can be relied upon. Now I need time to understand. I trust you, my friend. At the last trial, you will not abandon us to death.
"Here." He proffered the staff again. "Will you not accept my gift?"
Covenant did not reply at once. He was trembling also, and he had to clench himself before he could say without a tremor, "Why? Why do you trust me?"
The Hirebrand's eyes gleamed as if he were on the verge of tears, but he was smiling as he said, "You are a man who knows the value of beauty."
Covenant stared at that answer for a moment, then looked away. A complex shame came over him; he felt unclean, tainted, in the face of Baradakas' trust. But then he stiffened. Keep moving. Survive. What does trust have to do with it? Brusquely, he reached out and accepted the staff.
It felt pure in his hands, as if it had been shaped from the healthiest wood by the most loving devotion. He gripped it, scrutinized it, as if it could provide him with the innocence he lacked.
A short time later, he surprised himself with a wide yawn. He had not realized that he was so tired. He tried to suppress his weariness, but the effort only produced another yawn.
Baradakas responded with a kindly smile. He left the bed and motioned for Covenant to lie down.
Covenant had no intention of going to sleep, but as soon as he was horizontal, all the springwine he had consumed seemed to rush to his head, and he felt himself drifting on the high tree breeze. Soon he was fast in slumber.
He slept soundly, disturbed only by the memory of the Hirebrand's intense, questioning eyes, and by the sensation that the lomillialor was slipping through his fingers, no matter how hard he clenched it. When he awoke the next morning, his arms ached as if he had been grappling with an angel all night.
Opening his eyes, he found Atiaran sitting across the room from him, waiting. As soon as she saw that he was awake, she stood and moved closer to him. "Come, Thomas Covenant," she said. "Already we have lost the dawn of this day."
Covenant studied her for a moment. The background of her face held a deepening shadow of fatigue, and he guessed that she had spent much of the night talking with the Heers. But she seemed somehow comforted by what she had shared and heard, and the brightness of her glance was almost optimistic. Perhaps she now had some sort of hope.
He approved of anything that might reduce her hostility toward him, and he swung out of bed as if he shared her optimism. Despite the soreness of his arms, he felt remarkably refreshed, as if the ambience of the Woodhelven had been exerting its hospitality, its beneficence, to help him rest. Moving briskly, he washed his face, dried himself on a thick towel of leaves, then checked himself for injuries and adjusted his clothing. A loaf lay on the threelegged table, and when he broke off a hunk for his breakfast, he found that it was made of bread and meat baked together. Munching it, he went to look out one of the windows.
Atiaran joined him, and together they gazed through the branches northward. In the far distance, they saw a river running almost directly east, and beyond it the hills spread on to the horizon. But something more than the river separated these northern hills from those beside which the travelers had been walking since they had left Mithil Stonedown. The land beyond the river seemed to ripple in the morning sunshine, as if the quiet earth were flowing over shoals-as if there -the secret rock of the Land ruffled the surface, revealing itself to those who could read it. From his high Woodhelven vantage, Covenant felt he was seeing something that surpassed even his new perceptions.
"There," said Atiaran softly, as if she were speaking of a holy place, "there is Andelain. The Hirebrand has chosen his home well for such a view. Here the Mithil River runs east before turning north again toward Gravin Threndor and the Soulsease. And beyond are the Andelainian Hills, the hearthealing richness of the Land. Ali, Covenant, the seeing of them gives me courage. And Soranal has taught me a path which may make possible my fondest dream- With good fortune and good speed, we may see that which will turn much of my folly to wisdom. We must go. Are you prepared?"
No, Covenant thought. Not to go climbing around this tree. But he nodded. Atiaran had brought his pack to him, and while she stepped out of the Hirebrand's home onto the broad branch, he pulled the straps onto his shoulders, ignoring the ache of his arms. Then he took up the staff Baradakas had given him, and braced himself to risk his neck on the descent of the Woodhelven.
The trunk was only three or four steps away, but the two-hundred-foot drop to the ground made him freeze, hesitate apprehensively while the first reels of vertigo gnawed at his resolve. But as he stood in the Hirebrand's doorway, he heard the shouting of young voices, and saw children scampering through the branches overhead. Some of them pursued others, and in the chase they sprang from limb to limb as blithely as if the fall were helpless to hurt them.
The next instant, two children, a boy and a girl, dropped onto the limb before Covenant from a branch nearly twenty feet above. The girl was in merry pursuit of the boy, but he eluded her touch and darted around behind Covenant. From this covert, he shouted gleefully, "Safe! Chase another! I am safe!"
Without thinking, Covenant said, "He's safe."
The girl laughed, faked a lunge forward, and sprang away after someone else. At once, the boy dashed to the trunk and scurried up the ladder toward higher playgrounds.
Covenant took a deep breath, clutched the staff for balance, and stepped away from the door. Teetering awkwardly, he struggled to the relative safety of the trunk.
After that, he felt better. When he slid the staff through his pack straps, he could grip the ladder with both hands, and then the secure touch of the rungs reassured him. Before he had covered half the distance, his heart was no longer pounding, and he was able to trust his hold enough to look about him at the dwellings and people he passed.
Finally, he reached the lowest branches, and followed Atiaran down the stair to the ground. There the Heers were gathered to say their farewells. When he saw Baradakas, Covenant took the staff in his hands to show that he had not forgotten it, and grimaced in response to the Hirebrand's smile.
"Well, message-bearers," said Llaura after a pause, "you have told us that the fate of the Land is on your shoulders, and we believe. It sorrows us that we cannot ease the burden-but we judge that no one can take your place in this matter. What little help we can give we have given. All which remains for us is to defend our homes, and to pray for you. We wish you good speed for the sake of all the Land. And for your own sake we urge you to be in time for the Celebration. There are great omens of hope for any who view that festival.
"Atiaran Trell-mate, go in Peace and fealty. Remember the path Soranal taught you, and do not turn aside.
"Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and stranger to the Land-be true. In the hour of darkness, remember the Hirebrand's staff. Now be on your way."
Atiaran replied as formally as if she were completing a ritual. "We go, remembering Soaring Woodhelven for home and help and hope." She bowed, touching her palms to her forehead and then spreading her arms wide. Uncertainly, Covenant followed her example. The Heers returned the heart-opening gesture of farewell with ceremonial deliberateness. Then Atiaran strode off northward, and Covenant scudded along behind her like a leaf in the wake of her determination.
Neither of them looked back. The rest and restoration of the fair tree village made them brisk, gave them a forward air. They were both in their separate ways eager for Andelain, and they knew that Jehannum had left Soaring Woodhelven toward the east, not the north. They hastened ahead among the richening hills, and reached the banks of the Mithil River early that afternoon.
They crossed by wading a wide shallows. Before she entered the water, Atiaran removed her sandals, and some half conscious insight urged Covenant to take off his boots and socks, roll up his pant legs. As he smelled the first lush scents of the Hills, he felt somehow that he needed to wade the Mithil barefoot in order to be ready, that the foot-washing of the stream was necessary to transubstantiate his flesh into the keener essence of Andelain. And when he stepped onto the north bank, he found that he could feel its vitality through his feet; now even his soles were sensitive to the Land's health.
He so liked the strong sensation of the Hills under his toes that he was loath to put his boots back on, but he denied himself that pleasure so that he would be able to keep up with Atiaran's pace. Then he followed her along the path which Soranal had taught her-an easy way through the center of Andelain walked and wondered at the change that had come over the Earth since they had crossed the river.
He felt the change distinctly, but it seemed to go beyond the details which composed it. The trees were generally taller and broader than their southern relations; abundant and prodigal aliantha sometimes covered whole hillsides with viridian; the rises and vales luxuriated in deep aromatic grass; flowers bobbed in the breeze as spontaneously as if just moments before they had gaily burst from the nurture
of the soil; small woodland animals-rabbits, squirrels, badgers, and the like-scampered around, only vaguely remembering that they were wary of humans. But the real difference was transcendent. The Andelainian Hills carried a purer impression of health to all Covenant's senses than anything else he had experienced. The aura of rightness here was so powerful that he began to regret he belonged in a world where health was impalpable, indefinite, discernible only by implication. For a time, he wondered how he would be able to endure going back, waking up. But the beauty of Andelain soon made him forget such concerns. It was a dangerous loveliness-not because it was treacherous or harmful, but because it could seduce. Before long, disease, VSE, Despite, anger, all were forgotten, lost in the flow of health from one vista to another around him.
Enclosed in the Hills, surrounded by such tangible and specific vitality, he became more and more surprised that Atiaran did not wish to linger. As they hiked over the lambent terrain, penetrating league after league deeper into Andelain, he wanted to stop at each new revelation, each new valley or avenue or dale, to savor what he saw-grip it with his eyes until it was a part of him, indelible, secure against any coming bereavement. But Atiaran pushed on-arising early, stopping little, hurrying late. Her eyes were focused far away, and the fatigue mounting behind her features seemed unable to reach the surface. Clearly, even these Hills paled for her beside her anticipation of the unexplained "Celebration." Covenant had no choice but to urge himself after her; her will tolerated no delay.
Their second night away from Soaring Woodhelven was so bright and clear that they did not have to stop with the setting of the sun, and Atiaran kept going until nearly midnight. After supper, Covenant sat for a while looking at the sky and the piquant stars. The aging crescent of the moon stood high in the heavens, and its white sliver sent down only a suggestion of the eldritch light which had illuminated his
first night in the Land. Casually, he remarked, "The moon'll be dark in a few days."
At that, Atiaran looked at him sharply, as if she suspected that he had discovered some secret of hers. But she said nothing, and he did not know whether she reacted to a memory or to an anticipation.
The next day began as splendidly as the previous one. Sunshine be-gemmed the dew, sparkled like diamonds among the grass and leaves; air as fresh as the Earth's first breath carried the tang of aliantha and larch, the fragrance of Gilden and peony, across the Hills. Covenant beheld such things with something like bliss in his heart, and followed Atiaran northward as if he were content. But early in the afternoon something happened which darkened all his joy, offended him to the marrow of his bones. As he traveled down a natural lane between tree-thick hills, walking with a fine sense of the springy grass under his feet, he stepped without warning on a patch of turf that felt as dangerous as a pit of quicksand.
Instinctively, he recoiled, jerked back three steps. At once, the threatening sensation vanished. But his nerves remembered it from the sole of his foot up the whole length of his leg.
He was so surprised, so insulted, that he did not think to call Atiaran. Instead, he cautiously approached the spot on which he had felt the danger, and touched it with one tentative toe. This time, however, he felt nothing but the lush grass of Andelain. Bending down, he went over the grass for a yard in all directions with his hands. But whatever had fired his sense of wrongness was gone now, and after a moment of perplexity he started forward again. At first he took each step gingerly, expecting another jolt. But the earth seemed as full of pure, resonant vitality as before. Shortly, he broke into a trot to catch up with Atiaran.
Toward evening, he felt the sting of wrong again, as if he had stepped in acid. This time, he reacted in violent revulsion; he pitched forward as if diving away from a blast of lightning, and a yell ripped past his teeth before he could stop himself. Atiaran came back to him at a run, and found him pawing over the grass, tearing up the blades in handfuls of outrage.
"Here!" he gritted, thumping the turf with his fist. "By hell! It was here."
Atiaran blinked at him blankly. He jumped to his feet, pointed an accusing finger at the ground. "Didn't you feel it? It was there. Hellfire!" His finger quivered. "How did you miss it?"
"I felt nothing," she replied evenly.
He shuddered and dropped his hand. "It felt as if I-as if I stepped in quicksand-or acid-or"-he remembered the slain Waynhim-"or murder."
Slowly, Atiaran knelt beside the spot he indicated. For a moment, she studied it, then touched it with her hands. When she stood up, she said, "I feel nothing-"
"It's gone," he interrupted.
"-but I have not the touch of a rhadhamaerl," she went on. "Have you felt this before?"
"Once. Earlier."
"Ah," she sighed, "would that I were a Lord, and knew what to do. There must be an evil working deep in the Earth-a great evil, indeed, if the Andelainian Hills are not altogether safe. But the ill is new yet, or timid. It does not remain. We must hope to outrun it. Ah, weak! Our speed becomes less sufficient with each passing day."
She pulled her robe tightly about her, strode away into the evening. She and Covenant traveled on without a halt until night was thick around them, and the waning moon was high in its path among the stars.
The next day, Covenant felt convulsions of ill through the grass more often. Twice during the morning, and four times during the afternoon and evening, one foot or the other recoiled with sudden ferocity from the turf, and by the time Atiaran stopped for the night, his nerves from his legs to the roots of his teeth were raw and jangling. He felt intensely that such sore spots were an affront to, even a betrayal of, Andelain, where every other touch and line and hue of sky and tree and grass and hill was redolent with richness. Those attacks, pangs, stings made him involuntarily wary of the ground itself, as if the very foundation of the Earth had been cast into doubt.
On the fifth day since Soaring Woodhelven, he felt the wrongness in the grass less often, but the attacks showed an increase in virulence. Shortly after noon, he found a spot of ill that did not vanish after he first touched it. When he set his foot on it again, he felt a quiver as if he had stepped on an ache in the ground. The vibration rapidly numbed his foot, and his jaws hurt from clenching his teeth, but he did not back away. Calling to Atiaran, he knelt on the grass and touched the earth's sore with his hands.
To his surprise, he felt nothing.
Atiaran explored the ground herself, then considered him with a frown in her eyes. She also felt nothing.
But when he probed the spot with his foot, he found that the pain was still there. It scraped his brain, made sweat bead on his forehead, drew a snarl from his throat. As the ache spread through his bones, sending cold numbness up his leg, he bent to slide his fingers under the sole of his boot. But his hands still felt nothing; only his feet were sensitive to the peril.
On an impulse, he threw off one boot, removed his sock, and placed his bare foot on the spot of ill. This time, the discrepancy was even more surprising. He could feel the pain with his booted foot, but not with his bare one. And yet his sensations were perfectly clear; the wrong arose from the ground, not from his boot.
Before he could stop himself, he snatched off his other boot and sock, and cast them away from him. Then he dropped heavily to sit on the grass, and clutched his throbbing head in both hands.
"I have no sandals for you," Atiaran said stiffly. "You will need footwear before this journey has reached its end."
Covenant hardly heard her. He felt acutely that he had recognized a danger, identified a threat which had been warping him for days without his knowledge.
Is that how you're going to do it, Foul? he snarled. First my nerves come back to life. Then Andelain makes me forget, Then I throw away my boots. Is that it? Break down all my defenses one at a time so that I won't be able to protect myself? Is that how you're going to destroy me?
"We must go on," Atiaran said. "Decide what you will do."
Decide? Bloody hell! Covenant jerked himself to his feet. Fuming, he grated through his teeth, "It's not that easy." Then he stalked over to retrieve his boots and socks.
Survive.
He laced his feet into his boots as if they were a kind of armor.
For the rest of the day, he shied away from every hint of pain in the ground, and followed Atiaran grimly, with a clenched look in his eyes, striving against the stinging wrong to preserve his sovereignty, his sense of himself. And toward evening his struggle seemed to find success. After a particularly vicious attack late in the afternoon, the ill pangs stopped. He did not know whether or not they would return, but for a while at least he was free of them.
That night was dark with clouds, and Atiaran was forced to make camp earlier than usual. Yet she and Covenant got little rest. A light, steady rain soaked their blankets, and kept them awake most of the night, huddling for shelter under the deeper shadow of an enshrouding willow.
But the next morning-the sixth of their journey from Soaring Woodhelven -dawned bright and full of Andelainian cheer. Atiaran met it with haste and anticipation in her every move; and the way she urged Covenant along seemed to express more friendliness, more companionship, than anything she had done since the beginning of their sojourn. Her desire for speed was infectious; Covenant was glad to share it because it rescued him from thinking about the possibility of further attacks of wrong. They began the day's travel at a lope.
The day was made for traveling. The air was cool, the sun clean and encouraging; the path led straight and level; springy grass carried Atiaran and Covenant forward at every stride. And her contagious eagerness kept him trotting behind her league after league. Toward midday, she slowed her pace to eat treasure-berries along the way; but even then she made good speed, and as evening neared she pushed their pace into a lope again.
Then the untracked path which the Woodhelvennin had taught her brought them to the end of a broad valley. After a brief halt while she verified her bearings, she started straight up a long, slow hillside that seemed to carry on away eastward for a great distance. She chose a plumb-line direction which took her directly between two matched Gilden trees a hundred yards above the valley, and Covenant followed her toiling lope up the hill without question. He was too tired and out of breath to ask questions.
So they ascended that hillside-Atiaran trotting upward with her head held high and her hair fluttering, . as if she saw fixed before her the starry gates of heaven, and Covenant plodding, pumping behind her. At their backs, the sun sank in a deep exhalation like the release of a long pent-up sigh. And ahead of them the slope seemed to stretch on into the sky.
Covenant was dumbfounded when Atiaran reached the crest of the hill, stopped abruptly, grabbed his shoulders, and spun him around in a circle, crying joyfully, "We are here! We are in time!"
He lost his balance and fell to the turf. For a moment he lay panting, with hardly enough energy to stare at her. But she was not aware of him. Her eyes were fixed down the eastern slope of the hill as she called in a voice shortbreathed by fatigue and exultation and reverence, "Banas Nimoram! Ali, glad heart! Glad heart of Andelain. I have lived to this time."
Caught by the witchery of her voice, Covenant
levered himself to his feet and followed her gaze as if he expected to behold the soul of Andelain incarnate.
He could not refrain from groaning in the first sag of his disappointment. He could see nothing to account for Atiaran's rapture, nothing that was more healthy or precious than the myriad vistas of Andelain past which she had rushed unheeding. Below him, the grass dipped into a smooth wide bowl set into the hills like a drinking cup for the night sky. With the sun gone, the outlines of the bowl were not clear, but starlight was enough to show that there were no trees, no bushes, no interruptions to the smoothness of the bowl. It looked as regular as if the surface of the grass had been sanded and burnished. On this night, the stars seemed especially gay, as if the darkness of the moon challenged them to new brightness. But Covenant felt that such things were not enough to reward his bone-deep fatigue.
However, Atiaran did not ignore his groan. Taking his arm, she said, "Do not judge me yet," and drew him forward. Under the branches of the last tree on the bowl's lip, she dropped her pack and sat against the trunk, facing down the hill. When Covenant had joined her, she said softly, "Control your mad heart, Unbeliever. We are here in time. This is Banas Nimoram, the dark of the moon on the middle night of spring. Not in my generation has there been such a night, such a time of rareness and beauty. Do not measure the Land by the standard of yourself. Wait. This is Banas Nimoram, the Celebration of Spring-finest rite of all the treasures of the Earth. If you do not disturb the air with anger, we will see the Dance of the Wraiths of Andelain." As she spoke, her voice echoed with rich harmonics as if she were singing; and Covenant felt the force of what she promised, though he did not understand. It was not a time for questions, and he set himself to wait for the visitation.
Waiting was not difficult. First Atiaran passed bread and the last of her springwine to him, and eating and drinking eased some of his weariness. Then, as the night deepened, he found that the air which flowed up to them from the bowl had a lush, restful effect. When he took it far into his lungs, it seemed to unwind his cares and dreads, setting everything but itself behind him and lifting him into a state of calm suspense. He relaxed in the gentle breeze, settled himself more comfortably against the tree. Atiaran's shoulder touched his with warmth, as if she had forgiven him. The night deepened, and the stars gleamed expectantly, and the breeze sifted the cobwebs and dust from Covenant's heart-and waiting was not difficult.
The first flickering light came like a twist of resolution which brought the whole night into focus. Across the width of the bowl, he saw a flame like the burn of a candle-tiny in the distance, and yet vivid, swaying yellow and orange as clearly as if he held the candlestick in his hands. He felt strangely sure that the distance was meaningless; if the flame were before him on the grass, it would be no larger than his palm.
As the Wraith appeared, Atiaran's breath hissed intently between her teeth, and Covenant sat up straighter to concentrate more keenly.
With a lucid, cycling movement, the flame moved down into the bowl. It was not halfway to the bottom when a second fire arrived on the northern rim. Then two more Wraiths entered from the south-and then, too suddenly to be counted, a host of flames began tracing their private ways into the bowl from all directions. Some passed within ten feet of Atiaran and Covenant on either side, but they seemed unconscious of the observers; they followed their slow cycles as if each were alone in the Hills, independent of every gleam but its own. Yet their lights poured together, casting a dome of gold through which the stars could barely be seen; and at moments particular Wraiths seemed to bow and revolve around each other, as if sharing a welcome on their way toward the center.
Covenant watched the great movement that brought thousands of the flames, bobbing at shoulder height, into the bowl, and he hardly dared to breathe. In the excess of his wonder, he felt like an unpermitted spectator beholding some occult enactment which was not meant for human eyes. He clutched his chest as if his chance to see the Celebration to its end rode on the utter silence of his respiration, as if he feared that any sound might violate the fiery conclave, scare the Wraiths away.
Then a change came over the gathered flames. Up into the sky rose a high, scintillating, wordless song, an arching melody. From the center of the bowl, the private rotations of the Wraiths resolved themselves into a radiating, circling Dance. Each Wraith seemed finally to have found its place in a large, wheel-like pattern which filled half the bowl, and the wheel began to turn on its center. But there were no lights in the center; the wheel turned on a hub of stark blackness which refused the glow of the Wraiths.
As the song spread through the night, the great circle revolved-each flame dancing a secret, independent dance, various in moves and sways-each flame keeping its place in the whole pattern as it turned. And in the space between the inner hub and the outer rim, more circles rolled, so that the whole wheel was filled with many wheels, all turning. And no Wraith kept one position long. The flames flowed continuously through their moving pattern, so that as the wheel turned, the individual Wraiths danced from place to place, now swinging along the outer rim, now gyring through the middle circles, now circling the hub. Every Wraith moved and changed places constantly, but the pattern was never broken-no hiatus of misstep gapped the wheel, even for an instant-and every flame seemed both perfectly alone, wandering mysteriously after some personal destiny through the Dance, and perfectly a part of the whole. While they danced, their light grew stronger, until the stars were paled out of the sky, and the night was withdrawn, like a distant spectator of the Celebration.
And the beauty and wonder of the Dance made of Covenant's suspense a yearning ache.
Then a new change entered the festival. Covenant did not realize it until Atiaran touched his arm; her signal sent a thrill of awareness through him, and he saw that the wheel of the Wraiths was slowly bending. The rest of the wheel retained its shape, and the black core did not move. Gradually, the turning circle became lopsided as the outer Wraiths moved closer to the onlookers. Soon the growing bulge pointed unmistakably at Covenant.
In response, he seemed to feel their song more intensely-a keening, ecstatic lament, a threnody as throbbingly passionate as a dirge and as dispassionate as a sublime, impersonal affirmation. Their nearing flames filled him with awe and fascination, so that he shrank within himself but could not move. Cycle after cycle, the Wraiths reached out toward him, and he clasped his hands over his knees and held himself still, taut-hearted and utterless before the fiery Dancers.
In moments, the tip of this long extension from the circle stood above him, and he could see each flame bowing to him as it danced by. Then the rim of the extension dipped, and the pace of the Dance slowed, as though to give each Wraith a chance to linger in his company. Soon the fires were passing within reach of his hand. Then the long arm of the Dance flared, as if a decision had run through the Dancers. The nearest Wraith moved forward to settle on his wedding band.
He flinched, expecting the fire to burn him, but there was no pain. The flame attached itself to the ring as to a wick, and he felt faintly the harmonies of the Celebration song through his finger. As the Wraith held to his ring, it danced and jumped as if it were feeding excitedly there. And slowly its color turned from flaming yellow-orange to silver-white.
When the transformation was complete, that Wraith flashed away, and the next took its place. A succession of fires followed, each dancing on his ring until it became argent; and as his anxiety relaxed, the succession grew faster. In a short time, the line of glistening white Wraiths had almost reached back to the rest of the Dance. Each new flame presented itself swiftly, as if eager for some apotheosis, some culmination of its being, in the white gold of Covenant's ring.
Before long, his emotion became too strong to let him remain seated. He surged to his feet, holding out his ring so that the Wraiths could light on it without lowering themselves.
Atiaran stood beside him. He had eyes only for the transformation which his ring somehow made possible, but she looked away across the Dance.
What she saw made her dig her fingers like claws of despair into his arm. "No! By the Seven! This must not be!"
Her cry snatched at his attention; his gaze jumped across the bowl.
"There! That is the meaning of the ill your feet have felt!"
What he saw staggered him like a blow to the heart.
Coming over the northeast rim of the bowl into the golden light was an intruding wedge of blackness, as pitch-dark and un-illuminable as the spawning ground of night. The wedge cut its narrow way down toward the Dance, and through the song of the flames, it carried a sound like a host of bloody feet rushing over clean grass. Deliberately, agonizingly, it reached inward without breaking its formation. In moments, the tip of the darkness sliced into the Dance and began plunging toward its center.
In horror, Covenant saw that the Dance did not halt or pause. At the wedge's first touch, the song of the Wraiths dropped from the air as if it had been ripped away by sacrilege, leaving no sound behind it but a noise like running murder. But the Dance did not stop. The flames went on revolving as if they were unconscious of what was happening to them, helpless. They followed their cycles into the wedge's path and vanished as if they had fallen into an abyss. No Wraith emerged from that darkness.
Swallowing every light that touched it, the black wedge gouged its way into the Celebration.
"They will all die!" Atiaran groaned. "They cannot stop-cannot escape. They must dance until the Dance is done. All dead-every Wraith, every bright light of the Land! This must not be. Help them! Covenant, help them!"
But Covenant did not know how to help. He was paralyzed. The sight of the black wedge made him feel as nauseated as if he were observing across a gulf of numbness his fingers being eaten by a madman nauseated and enraged and impotent, as if he had waited too long to defend himself, and now had no hands with which to fight back. The knife of Triock slipped from his numb fingers and disappeared in darkness.
How-?
For an instant, Atiaran dragged furiously at him. "Covenant! Help them!" she shrieked into his face. Then she turned and raced down into the valley to meet the wedge.
The Wraiths-!
Her movement broke the freeze of his horror. Snatching up the staff of Baradakas, he ducked under the flames and sped after her, holding himself bent over to stay below the path of the Wraiths. A madness seemed to hasten his feet; he caught Atiaran before she was halfway to the hub. Thrusting her behind him, he dashed on toward the penetrating wedge, spurred by a blind conviction that he had to reach the center before the blackness did.
Atiaran followed, shouting after him, "Ware and ward! They are ur-viles! Demondim corruption!"
He scarcely heard her. He was focused on the furious need to gain the center of the Dance. For better speed, he ran more upright, flicking his head aside whenever a Wraith flashed near the level of his eyes.
With a last burst, he broke into the empty core of the wheel.
He halted. Now he was close enough to see that the wedge was composed of tall, crowded figures, so blackfleshed that no light could gleam or glisten on their skin. As the helpless Wraiths swung into the wedge, the attackers ate them.
The ur-viles drew nearer. The tip of their wedge was a single figure, larger than the rest. Covenant could see it clearly. It looked like one of the Waynhim grown tall and evil-long torso, short limbs of equal length, pointed ears high on its head, eyeless face almost filled by gaping nostrils. Its slit mouth snapped like a trap whenever a Wraith came near. Mucus
trailed from its nostrils back along either side of its head. When Covenant faced it, its nose twitched as if it smelled new game, and it snarled out a cadenced bark like an exhortation to the other creatures. The whole wedge thrust eagerly forward.
Atiaran caught up with Covenant and shouted in his ear, "Your hand! Look at your hand!"
He jerked up his left hand. A Wraith still clung to his ring-burning whitely-obliviously dancing.
The next instant, the leading ur-vile breached the core of the Dance and stopped. The attackers stood packed against each other's shoulders behind their leader. Dark, roynish, and cruel, they slavered together and bit at the helpless Wraiths.
Covenant quailed as if his heart had turned to sand. But Atiaran raged, "Now! Strike them now!"
Trembling, he stepped forward. He had no idea what to do.
At once, the first ur-vile brandished a long knife with a seething, blood-red blade. Fell power radiated from the blade; in spite of themselves, Covenant and Atiaran recoiled.
The ur-vile raised its hand to strike.
Impulsively, Covenant shoved the white, burning Wraith at the ur-vile's face. With a snarl of pain, the creature jumped back.
A sudden intuition gripped Covenant. Instantly, he touched the end of his staff to the burning Wraith. With a flash, bold white flame bloomed from the staff, shading the gold of the Dance and challenging the force of the ur-viles. Their leader retreated again.
But at once it regained its determination. Springing forward, it stabbed into the heart of the white fire with its blood-red blade.
Power clashed in the core of the Dance. The ur-vile's blade seethed like hot hate, and the staff blazed wildly. Their conflict threw sparks as if the air were aflame in blood and lightning.
But the ur-vile was a master. Its might filled the bowl with a deep, crumbling sound, like the crushing of a boulder under huge pressure. In one abrupt exertion, Covenant's fire was stamped out.
The force of the extinguishing threw him and Atiaran to their backs on the grass. With a growl of triumph, the ur-viles poised to leap for the kill.
Covenant saw the red knife coming, and cowered with a pall of death over his mind.
But Atiaran scrambled back to her feet, crying, "Melenkurion! Melenkurion abatha!" Her voice sounded frail against the victory of the ur-viles, but she met them squarely, grappled with the leader's knife-hand. Momentarily, she withheld its stroke.
Then, from behind her to the west, her cry was answered. An iron voice full of fury shouted, "Melenkurion abatha! Binas mill Banas Nimoram khabaal! Melenkurion abatha! Abatha Nimoram!" The sound broke through Covenant's panic, and he lurched up to Atiaran's aid. But together they could not hold back the ur-vile; it flung them to the ground again. At once, it pounced at them.
It was stopped halfway by a hulking form that leaped over them to tackle it. For a moment, the two wrestled savagely. Then the newcomer took the bloodred blade and drove it into the heart of the creature.
A burst of snarls broke from the ur-viles. Covenant heard a sweeping noise like the sound of many children running. Looking up, he saw a stream of small animals pour into the bowl-rabbits, badgers, weasels, moles, foxes, a few dogs. With silent determination, they hurled themselves at the ur-viles.
The Wraiths were scattering. While Covenant and Atiaran stumbled to their feet, the last flame passed from the bowl.
But the ur-viles remained, and their size made the animals' attack look like a mere annoyance. In the sudden darkness, the creatures seemed to expand, as if the light had hindered them, forced them to keep their close ranks. Now they broke away from each other. Dozens of blades that boiled like lava leaped out as one, and in horrible unison began to slaughter the animals.
Before Covenant could take in all that was happening, the hulking figure who had saved them turned and hissed, "Go! North to the river. I have released the Wraiths. Now we will make time for your escape. Go!"
"No!" Atiaran panted. "You are the only man. The animals are not enough. We must help you fight."
"Together we are not enough!" he cried. "Do you forget your task? You must reach the Lords-must! Drool must pay for this Desecration! Go! I cannot give you much time!" Shouting, "Melenkurion abatha!" he whirled and jumped into the thick of the fray, felling ur-viles with his mighty fists.
Pausing only to pick up the staff of Baradakas, Atiaran fled northward. And Covenant followed her, running as if the ur-vile blades were striking at his back. The stars gave them enough light. They drove themselves up the slope, not looking to see if they were pursued, not caring about the packs they left behind afraid to think of anything except their need for distance. As they passed over the rim of the bowl, the sounds of slaughter were abruptly dimmed. They heard no pursuit. But they ran on-ran, and still ran, and did not stop until they were caught in midstride by a short scream, full of agony and failed strength.
At the sound, Atiaran fell to her knees and dropped her forehead to the earth, weeping openly. "He is dead!" she wailed. "The Unfettered One, dead! Alas for the Land! All my paths are ill, and destruction fills all my choices. From the first, I have brought wrong upon us. Now there will be no more Celebrations, and the blame is mine." Raising her face to Covenant, she sobbed, "Take your staff and strike me, Unbeliever!"
Blankly, Covenant stared into the pooled hurt of her eyes. He felt benumbed with pain and grief and wasted rage, and did not understand why she castigated herself. He stooped for the staff, then took her arm and lifted her to her feet. Stunned and empty, he led her onward into the night until she had cried out her anguish and could stand on her own again. He wanted to weep himself, but in his long struggle with the misery of being a leper he had forgotten how, and now he could only keep on walking. He was
aware as Atiaran regained control of herself and pulled away from him that she accused him of something. Throughout the sleepless night of their northward trek, he could do nothing about it.