Power That Preserves Page 17

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

  “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 leveled 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 defense 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 himself.

  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.

  Something shook his head, something was hitting him on the side of his head. At first, the ice protected him, then it broke away with a tearing pain as if it had taken his ear with it. The howling of wind demons rushed at him, and he almost did not hear Quirrel shout, “Hills! Foothills! Climb! Find shelter!”

  He was an old man, too old for such labor. He was a strong Stonedown Cattleherd, and did not intend to die frozen and useless. He lumbered to his feet, struggled upward.

  Leaning weakly back against the wind, he ascended the ragged slope. He realized dimly that both wind and snow were less now. But still he could see nothing; now the storm itself was wrapped in night. When the slope became too steep for the wind to push him up it, he turned to the side which offered the least resistance and went on, lumbering blindly through knee-deep snow, letting the blizzard guide him wherever it chose.

  Yet in spite of the night and the storm, his senses became slowly aware of looming rock walls. The wind lost its single fury, turned to frigid gusts and eddies, and he limped between sheer, close cliffs into a valley. But the disruption of the storm’s
force came too late to save him. The valley floor lay waist-deep in heavy gray snow, and he was too exhausted to make much headway against it. Once again, he found he was supporting a comrade; Quirrel hung from his shoulders like spent mortality. Soon he could go no farther. He fell into a snowbank, gasping into the snow, “Fire. Must—fire.”

  But his hands were too frozen, his arms were too locked in ice. He could not reach his lomillialor rod, could never have pulled flame from it. Quirrel had already lost her graveling. And his was in his pack. It might as well have been lost also; he could not free his shoulders from the pack straps. He tried to rouse Quirrel, failed. The lower half of her face was caked in ice, and her eyelids fluttered as if she were going into shock.

  “Fire,” Triock rasped. He was sobbing and could not stop. Frustration and exhaustion overwhelmed him. The snow towered above him as if it would go on forever.

  Tears froze his eyes shut, and when he pried them open again, he saw a yellow flame flickering its way toward him. He stared at it dumbly. It bobbed and weaved forward as if it were riding the wick of an invisible candle until it was so close to his face that he could feel its warm radiance on his eyeballs. But it had no wick. It stood in the air before his face and flickered urgently, as if it were trying to tell him something.

  He could not move; he felt that ice and exhaustion had already frozen his limbs to the ground. But when he glanced away from the flame, he saw others, three or four more, dancing around him and Quirrel. One of them touched her forehead as if it were trying to catch her attention. When it failed, it flared slightly, and at once all the flames left, scurried away down the valley. Triock watched them go as if they were his last hope.

  Then the cold came over him like slumber, and he began to lose consciousness. Unable to help himself, he sagged toward night. The cold and the snow and the valley faded and were replaced by vague faces—Lena, Elena, Atiaran, Trell, Saltheart Foamfollower, Thomas Covenant. They all regarded him with supplication, imploring him to do something. If he failed, their deaths would have no meaning. “Forgive me,” he breathed, speaking especially to Covenant. “Forgive.”

  “Perhaps I shall,” a distant voice replied. “It will not be easy—I do not desire these intrusions. But you bear a rare token. I see that I must at least help you.”

  Struggling, Triock turned his sight outward again. The air over his head was bright with dancing flames, each no larger than his hand. And among them stood a tall man dressed only in a long robe the color of granite. He met Triock’s gaze awkwardly, as if he were unaccustomed to dealing with eyes other than his own. But when Triock croaked, “Help,” he replied quickly, “Yes. I will help you. Have no fear.”

  Moving decisively, he knelt, pulled open Triock’s cloak and tunic, and placed one warm palm on his chest. The man sang softly to himself, and as he did so, Triock felt a surge of heat pour into him. His pulse steadied almost at once; his breathing unclenched; with wondrous speed, the possibility of movement returned to his limbs. Then the man turned away to help Quirrel. By the time Triock was on his feet among the bobbing flames, she had regained consciousness.

  He recognized the flames now; he had heard of them in some of the happiest and saddest legends of the Land. They were Wraiths. As he shook his head clear of ice, he heard through the gusting wind snatches of their light crystal song, music like the melody of perfect quartz. They danced about him as if they were asking him questions which he would never be able to understand or answer, and their lights bemused him, so that he stood entranced among them.

  The tall man distracted him by helping Quirrel to her feet. Surrounded by Wraiths, he raised her, supported her until she could stand on her own. Then for a moment he looked uncomfortably back and forth between her and Triock. He seemed to be asking himself if he could justify leaving them there, not helping them further. Almost at once, however, he made his decision. The distant roar of the blizzard rose and fell as if some hungry storm-animal strove to gain access to the valley. He shivered and said, “Come. Foul’s winter is no place for flesh and blood.”

  As the man turned to move toward the upper end of the valley, Triock said abruptly, “You are One of the Unfettered.”

  “Yes. Yet I aid you.” His voice vanished as soon as it appeared on the tattered wind. “I was once Woodhelvennin. The hand of the Forest is upon me. And you”—he was thrusting powerfully away through the snow as if he were talking to himself, as if he had been companionless for so long that he had forgotten how people listen—“bear lomillialor.”

  Triock and Quirrel pushed after him. His gait was strong, unweary, but by following his path through the drifts, they were able to keep up with him. The Wraiths lighted their way with crystal music until Triock felt that he was moving through a pocket of Andelain, a brief eldritch incarnation of clean light and warmth amid the Gray Slayer’s preternatural malevolence. In the dancing encouragement of the flames, he was able to disregard his great fatigue and follow the Unfettered One’s song:

  Lone

  Unfriended

  Bondless

  Lone—

  Drink of loss until ’tis done:

  ’Til solitude has come and gone,

  And silence is communion—

  And yet

  Unfriended

  Bondless

  Lone.

  Slowly they worked their way up to the end of the valley. It was blocked by a huge litter of boulders, but the Unfettered One led them along an intricate path through the rocks. Beyond, they entered a sheer ravine which gradually closed over their heads until they were walking into a black cave lit only by the flickering of the Wraiths. In time, the crooked length of the cave shut out all the wind and winter. Warmth grew around Triock and Quirrel, causing their garments to drip thickly. And ahead they saw more light.

  Then they reached the cave end, the Unfettered One’s home. Here the cave expanded to form a large chamber, and all of it was alive with light and music, as scores of Wraiths flamed and curtsied in the air. Some of them cycled through the center of the chamber, and others hung near the black walls as if to illuminate inscriptions on the gleaming facets of the stone. The floor was rude granite marked by lumps and projecting surfaces which the Unfettered One clearly used as chairs, tables, bed. But the walls and ceiling were as black as obsidian, and they were covered with reflective irregular planes like the myriad fragments of a broken mirror in which the Wraith light would have dazzled the beholders if the surfaces had not been made of black stone. As it was, the chamber was warm and evocative; it seemed a fit place for a seer to read the writing graved within the heart of the mountain.

  At the mouth of the chamber, Triock and Quirrel shed their packs and cloaks, opened their ice-stiff inner garments to the warmth. Then they took their first clear look at their rescuer. He was bald except for a white fringe at the back of his head, and his mouth hid in a gnarled white beard. His eyes were so heavily couched in wrinkles that he seemed to have spent generations squinting at illegible communications; and this impression of age was both confirmed by the old pallor of his skin and denied by the upright strength of his frame. Now Triock could see that his robe had been white at one time. It had gained its dull granite color from long years of contact with the cave walls.

  In his home, he seemed even more disturbed by the Stonedownors. His eyes flicked fearful and surprised glances at them—not as if he considered them evil, but rather as if he distrusted their clumsiness, as if his life lay in fragile sections on the floor and might be broken by their feet.

  “I have little food,” he said as he watched the puddles which Triock and Quirrel left behind. “Food also—I have no time for it.” But then an old memory seemed to pass across his face—a recollection that the people of the Land did not treat their guests in this way. Triock felt suddenly sure that the One had been living in this cave before he, Triock, was born. “I am not accustomed,” the man went on as if he felt he should explain himself. “One life does not suffice. When I found I could not re
fuse succor to the Wraiths—much time was lost. They repay me as they can, but much—much— How can I live to the end of my work? You are costly to me. Food itself is costly.”

  As Triock recovered himself in the cave’s mouth, he remembered his message to the Lords, and his face tightened into its familiar frown. “The Gray Slayer is costly,” he replied grimly.

  His statement disconcerted the Unfettered One. “Yes,” he mumbled. Bending quickly, he picked up a large flask of water and a covered urn containing dried fruit. “Take all you require,” he said as he handed these to Triock. “I have—I have seen some of the Despiser’s work. Here.” He gestured vaguely at the walls of his cave.

  There was little fruit in the urn, but Triock and Quirrel divided it between them. As he munched his share, Triock found he felt a great deal better. Although the meager amount of food hardly touched his hunger, his skin seemed to be absorbing nourishment as well as warmth from the Wraith light. And the radiance of the flames affected him in other ways also. Gradually the numbness of frostbite faded from his fingers and toes ears; blood and health flowed back into them as if they had been treated with hurtloam. Even the habitual sourness which galled his mouth seemed to decline.

  But his mission remained clear to him. When he was sure that Quirrel had regained her stability, he asked her to go a short way out of the tunnel to stand guard.

  She responded tightly, “Will pursuit come even here?”

  “Who can say?” The Unfettered One did not appear to be listening, so Triock went on: “But we must have this One’s aid—and I fear he will not be persuaded easily. We must not be surprised here with the message unattempted.”