Lord Foul's Bane Page 7

  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 hear
ing 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 he
rself, 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