Thomas Covenant 01: Lord Foul's Bane Page 19

  Blue under the azure sky, it meandered broad, quiet and slow almost directly eastward across their path like a demarcation or boundary of achievement. As it turned and ran among the Hills, it had a glitter of youth, a sparkle of contained exuberance which could burst into laughter the moment it was tickled by any shoals. And its water was as clean, clear and fresh as an offer of baptism. At the sight of it, Covenant felt a rushing desire to plunge in, as if the stream had the power to wash away his mortality.

  But he was distracted from it almost immediately.

  Some distance away to the west, and moving upstream in the center of the river, was a boat like a skiff with a tall figure in the stern. The instant she saw it, Atiaran cried out sharply, waved her arms, then began pelting down the slope, calling with a frantic edge to her voice, “Hail! Help! Come back! Come back!”

  Covenant followed less urgently. His gaze was fixed on the boat.

  With a swing of its prow, it turned in their direction.

  Atiaran threw her arms into the air again, gave one more call, then dropped to the ground. When Covenant reached her, she was sitting with her knees clasped to her chest, and her lips trembled as if her face were about to break. She stared feverishly at the approaching boat.

  As it drew nearer, Covenant began to see with growing surprise just how tall the steering figure was. Before the boat was within a hundred feet of them, he was sure that the steersman was twice his own height. And he could see no means of propulsion. The craft appeared to be nothing more than an enormous rowboat, but there were no oarlocks, no oars, no poles. He gaped widely at the boat as it glided closer.

  When it was within thirty feet of them, Atiaran thrust herself to her feet and called out, “Hail, Rockbrother! The Giants of Seareach are another name for friendship! Help us!” The boat kept gliding toward the bank, but its steersman did not speak; and shortly Atiaran added in a whisper that only Covenant could hear, “I beg you.”

  The Giant kept his silence as he approached. For the last distance, he swung the tiller over so that the boat’s prow aimed squarely at the riverbank. Then, just before the craft struck, he drove his weight down in the stern. The prow lifted out of the water and grounded itself securely a few yards from Atiaran and Covenant. In a moment, the Giant stood before them on the grass, offering them the salute of welcome.

  Covenant shook his head in wonder. He felt that it was impossible for anyone to be so big; the Giant was at least twelve feet tall. But the rocky concreteness of the Giant’s presence contradicted him. The Giant struck his perceptions as tangibly as stumbling on rough stone.

  Even for a being twelve feet tall, he appeared gnarled with muscles, like an oak come to life. He was dressed in a heavy leather jerkin and leggings, and carried no weapons. A short beard, as stiff as iron, jutted from his face. And his eyes were small, deep-set and enthusiastic. From under his brows, massed over his sockets like the wall of a fortress, his glances flashed piercingly, like gleams from his cavernous thoughts. Yet, in spite of his imposing appearance, he gave an impression of incongruous geniality, of immense good humor.

  “Hail, Rocksister,” he said in a soft, bubbling tenor voice which sounded too light and gentle to come from his bemuscled throat. “What is your need? My help is willing, but I am a legate, and my embassy brooks little delay.”

  Covenant expected Atiaran to blurt out her plea; the hesitation with which she met the Giant’s offer disturbed him. For a long moment, she gnawed her lips as if she were chewing over her rebellious flesh, searching for an utterance which would give direction, one way or another, to a choice she hated. Then, with her eyes downcast as if in shame, she murmured uncertainly, “Where do you go?”

  At her question, the Giant’s eyes flashed, and his voice bubbled like a spring of water from a rock as he said, “My destination? Who is wise enough to know his own goal? But I am bound for—No, that name is too long a story for such a time as this. I go to Lord’s Keep, as you humans call it.”

  Still hesitating, Atiaran asked, “What is your name?”

  “That is another long story,” the Giant returned, and repeated, “What is your need?”

  But Atiaran insisted dully, “Your name.”

  Again a gleam sprang from under the Giant’s massive brows. “There is power in names. I do not wish to be invoked by any but friends.”

  “Your name!” Atiaran groaned.

  For an instant, the Giant paused, indecisive. Then he said, “Very well. Though my embassy is not a light one, I will answer for the sake of the loyalty between my people and yours. To speak shortly, I am called Saltheart Foamfollower.”

  Abruptly some resistance, some hatred of her decision, crumbled in Atiaran as if it had been defeated at last by the Giant’s trust. She raised her head, showing Covenant and Foamfollower the crushed landscape behind her eyes. With grave deliberation, she gave the salute of welcome. “Let it be so. Saltheart Foamfollower, Rockbrother and Giants’ legate, I charge you by the power of your name, and by the great Keep of faith which was made between Damelon Giantfriend and your people, to take this man, Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and stranger to the Land, in safety to the Council of Lords. He bears messages to the Council from Kevin’s Watch. Ward him well, Rockbrother. I can go no farther.”

  What? Covenant gaped. In his surprise, he almost protested aloud, And give up your revenge? But he held himself still with his thoughts reeling, and waited for her to take a stance he could comprehend.

  “Ah, you are too quick to call on such bold names,” the Giant said softly. “I would have accepted your charge without them. But I urge you to join us. There are rare healings at Lord’s Keep. Will you not come? Those who await you would not begrudge such a sojourn—not if they could see you as I do now.”

  Bitterness twisted Atiaran’s lips. “Have you seen the new moon? That comes of the last healing I looked for.” As she went on, her voice grew gray with self-despite. “It is a futile charge I give you. I have already caused it to fail. There has been murder in all my choices since I became this man’s guide, such murder—” She choked on the bile of what she had seen, and had to swallow violently before she could continue. “Because my path took us too close to Mount Thunder. You passed around that place. You must have seen the evil working there.”

  Distantly the Giant said, “I saw.”

  “We went into the knowledge of that wrong, rather than make our way across the Center Plains. And now it is too late for anyone. He—The Gray Slayer has returned. I chose that path because I desired healing for myself. What will happen to the Lords if I ask them to help me now?”

  And give up your revenge? Covenant wondered. He could not comprehend. He turned completely toward her and studied her face, trying to see her health, her spirit.

  She looked as if she were in the grip of a ravaging illness. Her mien had thinned and sharpened; her spacious eyes were shadowed, veiled in darkness; her lips were drained of blood. And vertically down the center of her forehead lay a deep line like a rift in her skull—the tool work of unblinkable despair. Etched there was the vastness of the personal hurt which she contained by sheer force of will, and the damage she did herself by containing it.

  At last Covenant saw clearly the moral struggle that wasted her, the triple conflict between her abhorrence of him, her fear for the Land, and her dismay at her own weakness—a struggle whose expense exhausted her resources, reduced her to penury. The sight shamed his heart, made him drop his gaze. Without thinking, he reached toward her and said—in a voice full of self-contradicting pleas, “Don’t give up.”

  “Give up?” she gasped in virulence, backing away from him. “If I gave up, I would stab you where you stand!” Suddenly she thrust a hand into her robe and snatched out a stone knife like the one Covenant had lost. Brandishing it, she spat, “Since the Celebration—since you permitted Wraiths to die—this blade has cried out for your blood: Other crimes I could set aside. I speak for my own. But that—! To countenance such desecration—!”
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  She hurled the knife savagely to the ground, so that it stuck hilt-deep in the turf by Covenant’s feet. “Behold!” she cried, and in that instant her voice became abruptly gelid, calm. “I wound the Earth instead of you. It is fitting. I have done little else since you entered the Land.

  “Now hear my last word, Unbeliever. I let you go because these decisions surpass me. Delivering children in the Stonedown does not fit me for such choices. But I will not intrude my desires on the one hope of the Land—barren as that hope is. Remember that I have withheld my hand—I have kept my Oath.”

  “Have you?” he asked, moved by a complex impulse of sympathy and nameless ire.

  She pointed a trembling finger at her knife. “I have not harmed you. I have brought you here.”

  “You’ve hurt yourself.”

  “That is my Oath,” she breathed stiffly. “Now, farewell. When you have returned in safety to your own world, remember what evil is.”

  He wanted to protest, argue, but her emotion mastered him, and he held himself silent before the force of her resolve. Under the duress of her eyes, he bent, and drew her knife out of the grass. It came up easily. He half expected to see blood ooze from the slash it had made in the turf, but the thick grass closed over the cut, hiding it as completely as an absolution. Unconsciously he tested the blade with his thumb, felt its acuteness.

  When he looked up again, he saw that Atiaran was climbing up the hill and away, moving with the unequal stride of a cripple.

  This isn’t right! he shouted at her back. Have mercy!—pity! But his tongue felt too thick with the pain of her renunciation; he could not speak. At least forgive yourself. The tightness of his face gave him a nasty impression that he was grinning. Atiaran! he groaned. Why are we so unable?

  Into his aching, the Giant’s voice came gently. “Shall we go?”

  Dumbly Covenant nodded. He tore his eyes from Atiaran’s toiling back, and shoved her knife under his belt.

  Saltheart Foamfollower motioned for him to climb into the boat. When Covenant had vaulted over the gunwale and taken a seat on a thwart in the prow—the only seat in the thirty-foot craft small enough for him—the Giant stepped aboard, pushing off from the bank at the same time. Then he went to the broad, shallow stern. Standing there, he grasped the tiller. A surge of power flowed through the keel. He swung his craft away from the riverbank into midstream, and shortly it was moving westward among the Hills.

  As soon as he had taken his seat, Covenant had turned with failure in his throat to watch Atiaran’s progress up the hillside. But the surge of power which moved the boat gave it a brisk pace as fast as running, and in moments distance had reduced her to a brown mite in the lush, oblivious green of Andelain. With a harsh effort, he forced his eyes to let her go, compelled himself to look instead for the source of the boat’s power.

  But he could locate no power source. The boat ran smoothly up against the current as if it were being towed by fish. It had no propulsion that he could discern. Yet his nerves were sensitive to the energy flowing through the keel. Dimly he asked, “What makes this thing move? I don’t see any engine.”

  Foamfollower stood in the stern, facing upstream, with the high tiller under his left arm and his right held up to the river breezes; and he was chanting something, some plainsong, in a language Covenant could not understand—a song with a wave-breaking, salty timbre like the taste of the sea. For a moment after Covenant’s question, he kept up his rolling chant. But soon its language changed, and Covenant heard him sing:

  Stone and Sea are deep in life,

  two unalterable symbols of the world:

  permanence at rest, and permanence in motion;

  participants in the Power that remains.

  Then Foamfollower stopped, and looked down at Covenant with humor sparkling under his unbreachable brows. “A stranger to the Land,” he said. “Did that woman teach you nothing?”

  Covenant stiffened in his seat. The Giant’s tone seemed to demean Atiaran, denigrate the cost she had borne; his bland, impregnable forehead and humorous glance appeared impervious to sympathy. But her pain was vivid to Covenant. She had been dispossessed of so much normal human love and warmth. In a voice rigid with anger, he retorted, “She is Atiaran Trell-mate, of Mithil Stonedown, and she did better than teach me. She brought me safely past Ravers, murdered Waynhim, a bloody moon, ur-viles—Could you have done it?”

  Foamfollower did not reply, but a grin spread gaily over his face, raising the end of his beard like a mock salute.

  “By hell!” Covenant flared. “Do you think I’m lying? I wouldn’t condescend to lie to you.”

  At that, the Giant’s humor burst into high, head-back, bubbling laughter.

  Covenant watched, stifling with rage, while Foamfollower laughed. Briefly he bore the affront. Then he jumped from his seat and raised his staff to strike the Giant.

  Foamfollower stopped him with a placating gesture. “Softly, Unbeliever,” he said. “Will you feel taller if I sit down?”

  “Hell and blood!” Covenant howled. Swinging his arms savagely, he struck the floorboards with the ur-vile-blackened end of his staff.

  The boat pitched as if his blow had sent the river into convulsions. Staggering, he clutched a thwart to save himself from being thrown overboard. In a moment, the spasm passed, leaving the sun-glittered stream as calm as before. But he remained gripping the thwart for several long heartbeats, while his nerves jangled and his ring throbbed heavily.

  Covenant, he snarled to steady himself, you would be ridiculous if you weren’t so—ridiculous. He drew himself erect, and stood with his feet braced until he had a stranglehold on his emotions. Then he bent his gaze toward Foamfollower, probed the Giant’s aura. But he could perceive no ill; Foamfollower seemed as hale as native granite. Ridiculous! Covenant repeated. “She deserves respect.”

  “Ah, forgive me,” said the Giant. With a twist, he lowered the tiller so that he could hold it under his arm in a sitting position. “I meant no disrespect. Your loyalty relieves me. And I know how to value what she has achieved.” He seated himself in the stern and leaned back against the tiller so that his eyes were only a foot above Covenant’s. “Yes, and how to grieve for her as well. There are none in the Land, not men or Giants or Ranyhyn, who would bear you to—to Lord’s Keep faster than I will.”

  Then his smile returned. “But you, Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and stranger in the Land—you burn yourself too freely. I laughed when I saw you because you seemed like a rooster threatening one of the Ranyhyn. You waste yourself, Thomas Covenant.”

  Covenant took a double grip on his anger, and said quietly, “Is that a fact? You judge too quickly, Giant.”

  Another fountain of laughter bubbled out of Foamfollower’s chest. “Bravely said! Here is a new thing in the Land—a man accusing a Giant of haste. Well, you are right. But did you not know that men consider us a”—he laughed again—“a deliberate people? I was chosen as legate because short human names, which bereave their bearers of so much history and power and meaning, are easier for me than for most of my people. But now it appears that they are too easy.” Once more he threw back his head and let out a stream of deep gaiety.

  Covenant glared at the Giant as if all this humor were incomprehensible to him. Then with an effort he pulled himself away, dropped his staff into the bottom of the boat, and sat down on the thwart facing forward, into the west and the afternoon sun. Foamfollower’s laughter had a contagious sound, a coloration of uncomplicated joy, but he resisted it. He could not afford to be the victim of any more seductions. Already he had lost more of himself than he could hope to regain.

  Nerves don’t regenerate. He tolled the words as if they were a private litany, icons of his embattled self. Giants don’t exist. I know the difference.

  Keep moving, survive.

  He chewed his lips as if that pain could help him keep his balance, keep his rage under command.

  At his back, Saltheart Foamfollower softly began t
o chant again. His song rolled through its channel like a long inlet to the sea, rising and falling like a condensation of the tides, and the winds of distance blew through the archaic words. At intervals, they returned to their refrain—

  Stone and Sea are deep in life—

  then voyaged away again. The sound of long sojourning reminded Covenant of his fatigue, and he slumped in the prow to rest.

  Foamfollower’s question caught him wandering. “Are you a storyteller, Thomas Covenant?”

  Absently he replied, “I was, once.”

  “And you gave it up? Ah, that is as sad a tale in three words as any you might have told me. But a life without a tale is like a sea without salt. How do you live?”

  Covenant folded his arms across the gunwales and rested his chin on them. As the boat moved, Andelain opened constantly in front of him like a bud; but he ignored it, concentrated instead on the plaint of water past the prow. Unconsciously he clenched his fist over his ring. “I live.”

  “Another?” Foamfollower returned. “In two words, a story sadder than the first. Say no more—with one word you will make me weep.”

  If the Giant intended any umbrage, Covenant could not hear it. Foamfollower sounded half teasing, half sympathetic. Covenant shrugged his shoulders, and remained silent.

  In a moment, the Giant went on: “Well, this is a bad pass for me. Our journeying will not be easy, and I had hoped that you could lighten the leagues with a story. But no matter. I judge that you will tell no happy tales in any case. Ravers. Waynhim and Andelainian Wraiths slain. Well, some of this does not surprise me—our old ones have often guessed that Soulcrusher would not die as easily as poor Kevin hoped. Stone and Sea! All that Desecration—ravage and rapine—for a false hope. But we have a saying, and it comforts our children—few as they are—when they weep for the nation, the homes, and company of our people, which we lost—we say, Joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that speaks. The world has few stories glad in themselves, and we must have gay ears to defy Despite. Praise the Creator! Old Lord Damelon Giantfriend knew the value of a good laugh. When we reached the Land, we were too grieved to fight for the right to live.”