The Power That Preserves t1cotc-3 Read online

  Before he and his companions reached the top, the leading kresh crested the ridge behind them and gave out a ferocious howl. The sound hit Triock between his shoulder blades like the flick of a flail. He stopped, whirled to see the wolves rushing like yellow death along the ridge hardly five hundred yards from him.

  The sight made the skin of his scalp crawl, and his cold-stiff cheeks twitched as if he were trying to bare his teeth in fear. Without a word, he turned and attacked the climb again, threw himself through the snow until his pulse pounded and he seemed to be surrounded by his own gasping.

  When he gained the ridge top, he paused long enough to steady his gaze, then scanned the terrain ahead. Beyond this rib of the foothills, all the ground in a wide half-circle reaching to the very edge of the mountains fell steeply away into a deep valley. The valley was roughly conical in shape, open to the plains only through a sheer ravine on its north side. It offered no hope to Triock’s searching eyes. But clinging to the mountain edge beyond a narrow ledge along the lip of the valley was a broken pile of boulders, the remains of an old rockfall. Triock’s attention leaped to see if the boulders could be reached along the ledge.

  “Go!” Quirrel muttered urgently. “I will hold them here.”

  “Two javelins and one sword,” Triock panted in response. “Then they will outweigh us seven to two. I prefer you alive.” Pointing, he said, “We must cross that ledge to the rocks. There we can strike at the kresh from above. Come.”

  He started forward again, driving his tired legs as fast as he could, and Quirrel and Yeurquin followed on his heels. When they reached the rough ground where the ridge blended into the cliff, they clambered through it toward the ledge.

  At the ledge, Triock hesitated. The lip of the valley was packed in snow, and he could not tell how much solid rock was hidden under it. But the kresh were howling up the hill behind him; he had no time to scrape the snow clear. Gritting his teeth, he pressed himself against the cliff and started outward.

  His feet felt the slickness of the ledge. Ice covered the rock under the snow. But he had become accustomed to ice in the course of this preternatural winter. He moved with small, unabrupt steps, did not let himself slip. In moments, Quirrel and Yeurquin were on the ledge as well, and he was half-way to his destination.

  Suddenly, a muffled boom like the snapping of old bones echoed off the cliff. The ledge jerked. Triock scrambled for handholds in the rock, and found none. He and his comrades were too far from safety at either end of the ledge.

  An instant later, it fell under their weight. Plunging like stones in an avalanche, they tumbled helplessly down the steep side of the valley.

  Triock tucked his head and knees together and rolled as best he could. The snow protected him from the impacts of the fall, but it also gave way under him, prevented him from stopping or slowing himself. He could do nothing but hug himself and fall. Dislodged by the collapse of the ledge, more snow slid into the valley with him, adding its weight to his momentum as if it were hurling him at the bottom. In wild vertigo, he lost all sense of how far he had fallen or how far he was from the bottom. When he hit level ground, the force of the jolt slammed his breath away, left him stunned while snow piled over him.

  For a time, he lay smothered under the snow, but as the dizziness relaxed in his head, he began to recover. He thrust himself to his hands and knees. Gasping, he fought the darkness which swarmed his sight like clouds of bats rushing at his face. “Quirrel!” he croaked. “Yeurquin!”

  With an effort, he made out Quirrel’s legs protruding from the snow a short distance away. Beyond her, Yeurquin lay on his back. A bloody gash on his temple marred the blank pallor of his face. Neither of them moved.

  Abruptly, Triock heard the scrabbling of claws. A savage howl like an anthem of victory snatched his gaze away from Quirrel and Yeurquin, made him look up toward the slope of the valley.

  The kresh were charging furiously down toward him. They had chosen a shallower and less snowbound part of the ridge side, and were racing with rapacious abandon toward their fallen prey. Their leader was hardly a dozen yards from Triock.

  He moved instantly. His fighting experience took over, and he reacted without thought or hesitation. Snatching at his sword, he heaved erect, presented himself as a standing target to the first wolf. Fangs bared, red eyes blazing, it leaped for his throat. He ducked under it, twisted, and wrenched his sword into its belly.

  It sailed past him and crashed into the snow, lay still as if it were impaled on the red trail of its blood. But its momentum had torn his sword from his cold hand.

  He had no chance to retrieve his weapon. Already the next wolf was gathering to spring at him.

  He dove out from under its leap, rolled heels over head, snapped to his feet holding his lomillialor rod in his hands.

  The rod was not made to be a weapon; its shapers in the Loresraat had wrought that piece of High Wood for other purposes. But its power could be made to burn, and Triock had no other defence. Crying the invocation in a curious tongue understood only by the lillianrill, he swung the High Wood over his head and chopped it down on the skull of the nearest wolf.

  At the impact, the rod burst into flame like a pitch-soaked brand, and all the wolf’s fur caught fire as swiftly as tinder.

  The flame of the rod lapsed immediately, but Triock shouted to it and hacked at a kresh bounding at his chest. Again the power flared. The wolf fell dead in screaming flames.

  Another and another Triock slew. But each blast, each unwonted exertion of the High Wood’s might, drained his strength. With four kresh sizzling in the snow around him, his breath came in ragged heaves, gaps of exhaustion veered across his sight, and fatigue clogged his limbs like iron fetters.

  The five remaining wolves circled him viciously.

  He could not face them all at once. Their yellow fur bristled in violent smears across his sight; their red and horrid eyes flashed at him above their wet chops and imminent fangs. For an instant, his fighting instincts faltered.

  Then a weight of compact fury struck him from behind, slammed him face down in the trampled snow. The force of the blow stunned him, and the weight on his back pinned him. He could do nothing but hunch his shoulders against the rending poised over the back of his neck. But the weight did not move. It lay as inert as death across his shoulder blades.

  His fingers still clutched the lomillialor.

  With a convulsive heave, he rolled to one side, tipped the heavy fur off him. It smeared him with blood-blood that ran, still pulsing, from the javelin which pierced it just behind its foreleg.

  Another javelined kresh lay a few paces away.

  The last three wolves dodged and feinted around Quirrel. She stood over Yeurquin, whirling her sword and cursing.

  Triock lurched to his feet.

  At the same time, Yeurquin moved, struggled to get his legs under him. Despite the wound on his temple, his hands pulled instinctively at his sword.

  The sight of him made the wolves hesitate.

  In that instant, Triock snatched a javelin from the nearest corpse and hurled it with the strength of triumph into the ribs of another kresh.

  Yeurquin was unsteady on his feet; but with one lumbering hack of his sword, he managed to disable a wolf. It lurched away from him on three legs, but he caught up with it and cleft its skull.

  The last kresh was already in full flight. It did not run yipping, with its tail between its legs, like a thrashed cur; it shot straight toward the narrow outlet of the valley as if it knew where allies were and intended to summon them.

  “Quirrel!” Triock gasped.

  She moved instantly. Ripping her javelin free of the nearest wolf, she balanced the short shaft across her palm, took three quick steps, and lofted it after the running kresh. The javelin arched so high that Triock feared it would fall short, then plunged sharply downward and caught the wolf in the back. The beast collapsed in a rolling heap, flopped several times across the snow, throwing blood in all directi
ons, quivered, and lay still.

  Triock realized dimly that he was breathing in rough sobs. He was so spent that he could hardly retain his grip on the lomillialor. When Quirrel came over to him, he put his arms around her, as much to gain strength from her as to express his gratitude and comradeship. She returned the clasp briefly, as if his gesture embarrassed her. Then they moved toward Yeurquin.

  Mutely, they inspected and tended Yeurquin’s wound. Under other circumstances, Triock would not have considered the hurt dangerous; it was clean and shallow, and the bone was unharmed. But Yeurquin still needed time to rest and heal-and Triock had no time. The plight of his message was now more urgent than ever.

  He said nothing about this. While Quirrel cooked a meal, he retrieved their weapons, then buried all the kresh and the blood of battle under mounds of grey snow. This would not disguise what had happened from any close inspection, but Triock hoped that a chance enemy passing along the rim of the valley would not be attracted to look closer.

  When he was done, he ate slowly, gathering his strength, and his eyes jumped around the valley as if he expected ur-viles or worse to rise up suddenly from the ground against him. But then his mouth locked into its habitual dour lines. He made no concessions to Yeurquin’s injury; he told his companions flatly that he had decided to leave the foothills and risk cutting straight west toward the mountains where he hoped to find the Unfettered One. For such a risk, the only possibility of success lay in speed.

  With their supplies repacked and their weapons cleaned, they left the valley through its narrow northward outlet at a lope.

  They travelled during the day now for the sake of speed. Half dragging Yeurquin behind them, Triock and Quirrel trotted doggedly due west, across the cold-blasted flatland toward the eastmost outcropping of the mountains. As they moved, Triock prayed for snow to cover their trail.

  By the end of the next day, they caught their first glimpses of the great storm which brooded for more than a score of leagues in every direction over the approaches to Doom’s Retreat.

  North of that defile through the mountains, the parched ancient heat of the Southron Wastes met the Grey Slayer’s winter, and the result was an immense storm, rotating against the mountain walls which blocked it on the south and west. Its outer edges concealed the forces which raged within, but even from the distance of a day’s hard travelling, Triock caught hints of hurricane conditions: cycling winds that ripped along the ground as if they meant to lay bare the bones of the earth; snow as thick as night; gelid air cold enough to freeze blood in the warmest places of the heart.

  It lay directly across his path.

  Yet he led Quirrel and Yeurquin toward it for another day, hurried in the direction of the storm’s core until its outer winds were tugging at his garments, and its first snows were packing wetly against his windward side. Yeurquin was in grim condition-blood oozed like exhaustion through the overstrained scabs of his wound, and the tough fiber of his stamina was frayed and loosened like a breaking rope. But Triock did not turn aside. He could not attempt to skirt the storm, could not swing north toward the middle of the South Plains to go around. During the first night after the battle with the kresh, he had seen watch fires northeast of him. They were following him. He had studied them the next night, and had perceived that they were moving straight toward him, gaining ground at an alarming rate.

  Some enemy had felt his exertion of the lomillialor. Some enemy knew his scent now and pursued him like mounting furore.

  “We cannot outrun them,” Quirrel observed grimly as they huddled together under the lip of the storm to rest and eat.

  Triock said nothing. He could hear Covenant rasping, If we don’t start doing the impossible. Doing the impossible.

  A moment later, she sniffed the wind. “And I do not like the taste of this weather. There is a blizzard here-a blast raw enough to strike the flesh from our limbs.”

  The impossible, Triock repeated to himself. He should have said to the Unbeliever, “I was born to tend cattle. I am not a man who does impossible things.” He was tired and old and unwise. He should have taken Lena and led his people toward safety deep in the Southron Range, should have chosen to renew the ancient exile rather than allow one extravagant stranger to bend all Mithil Stonedown to the shape of his terrible purpose.

  Without looking at him, Quirrel said, “We must separate.”

  “Separate,” Yeurquin groaned hollowly.

  “We must confuse the trail-confuse these”-she spat fiercely along the wind-“so that you may find your way west.”

  Impossible. The word repeated itself like a weary litany in Triock’s mind.

  Quirrel raised her eyes to face him squarely. “We must.”

  And Yeurquin echoed, “Must.”

  Triock looked at her, and the wrinkles around his eyes winced as if even the skin of his face were afraid. For a moment, his jaw worked soundlessly. Then he grimaced. “No.”

  Quirrel tightened in protest, and he forced himself to explain. “We would gain nothing. They do not follow our trail-they could not follow a trail so swiftly. Your trails would not turn them aside. They follow the spoor of the High Wood.”

  “That cannot be,” she replied incredulously. “I sense nothing of it from an arm’s reach away.”

  “You have no eyes for power. If we part, you will leave me alone against them.”

  “Separate,” Yeurquin groaned again.

  “No!” Anger filled Triock’s mouth. “I need you.”

  “I slow you,” the injured man returned emptily, fatally. His face looked pale and slack, frost-rimed, defeated.

  “Come!” Triock surged to his feet, quickly gathered his supplies and threw his pack over his shoulders, then stalked away across the wind in the direction of the storm’s heart. He did not look behind him. But after a moment Quirrel caught up with him on the right, and Yeurquin came shambling after him on the left. Together, they cut their way into the blizzard.

  Before they had covered a league, they were stumbling against wind and snow as if the angry air were assaulting them with fine granite chips of cold. Snow piled against them, and the wind tore through their clothes as if the fabric were thinner than gauze. And in another league, they lost the light of day; the mounting snow flailed it out of the air. Quirrel tried to provide some light by uncovering a small urn of graveling, but the wind snatched the fire-stones from the urn, scattered them like a brief burning plume of gems from her hands. When they were gone, Triock could hardly make out her form huddled dimly near him, too cold even to curse what had happened. Yeurquin had dropped to the ground when they had stopped, and already he was almost buried in snow. Ahead of them — unmuffled now by the outer winds-Triock could see something of the rabid howl and scourge of the storm itself, the hurricane or blizzard shrieking at the violence of the forces which formed it.

  Its fury slammed against his senses like the crumbling of a mountain. Peering at it, he knew that there was nothing erect within it, no beast or man or Giant or tree or stone; the maelstroming winds had long since levelled everything which had dared raise its head above the battered line of the ground. Triock had to protect his eyes with his hands. Impossible was a pale word to describe the task of walking through that storm. But it was his only defence against pursuit.

  With all the strength he could muster, he lifted Yeurquin and helped the injured man lurch onward.

  Black wind and sharp snow clamped down on him, stamped at him, slashed sideways to cut his legs from under him. Cold blinded him, deafened him, numbed him; he only knew that he had not lost his companions because Quirrel clutched the back of his cloak and Yeurquin sagged with growing helplessness against him. But he himself was failing, and could do nothing to prevent the loss. He could hardly breathe; the wind ripped past him so savagely that he caught only inadequate pieces of it. Yeurquin’s weight seemed unendurable. He jerked woodenly to a halt. Out of a simple and unanswerable need for respite, he pushed Yeurquin away, forced him to support hims
elf.

  Yeurquin reeled, tottered a few steps along the wind, and abruptly vanished-disappeared as completely as if a sudden maw of the blizzard had swallowed him.

  “Yeurquin!” Triock screamed. “Yeurquin!”

  He dashed after his friend, grappling, groping frantically for him. For an instant, a dim shape scudded away just beyond his reach. “Yeurquin!” Then it was gone, scattered into the distance like a handful of brittle leaves on the raving wind.

  He ran after it. He was hardly conscious of Quirrel’s grip on his cloak, or of the wind yammering at his back, impelling him southward, away from his destination. Fear for Yeurquin drove every other thought from his mind. Suddenly he was no longer the bearer of impossible messages for the Lords. With a rush of passion, he became mere Triock son of Thuler, the former Cattleherd who could not bear to abandon a friend. He ran along the wind in search of Yeurquin as if his soul depended on it.

  But the snow struck at his back like one vicious blow prolonged into torment; the wind yelped and yowled in his numb ears, unmoored his bearings; the cold sucked the strength out of him, weakened him as if it frosted the blood in his veins. He could not find Yeurquin. He had rushed past his friend unknowing in the darkness-or Yeurquin had somewhere found the strength to turn to one side against the wind-or the injured man had simply fallen and disappeared under the snow. Triock shouted and groped and ran, and encountered nothing but the storm. When he tried to turn his head toward Quirrel, he found that inches of ice had already formed on his shoulders, freezing his neck into that one strained position. His very sweat turned to ice on him. He could not resist the blast. If he did not keep stumbling tortuously before the wind, he would fall and never rise again.

  He kept going until he had forgotten Yeurquin and Covenant and messages, forgotten everything except the exertion of his steps and Quirrel’s grim grasp on his cloak. He had no conception of where he was going; he was not going anywhere except along the wind, always along the wind. Gradually the storm became silent around him as the crusting snow froze over his ears. Leagues passed unnoticed. When the ground abruptly canted upward under him, he fell to his hands and knees. A wave of numbness and lassitude ran through him as if it were springing from the frostbite in his hands and feet.