Stephen Donaldson - The Wounded Land

In the silence of his clogged lungs, Covenant raged words he did not understand. Words of power.

Melenkurion abatha! Duroc minus mill khakaal!

Immediately, the firespout ruptured. In broken gouts and fear, it crashed backward as if he had cut off another arm of the lurker. Flames skirted like frustrated ire across the mud. Abruptly, the air was free. Wind empty of howling fed the fire. Covenant's companions coughed and gasped as if they had been rescued from the hands of a strangler.

He knelt on the dead ground. Peals of light rang in his head, tintinnabulating victory or defeat; either one, there was no difference; triumph and desecration were the same thing. He was foundering-

But hands came to succour him. They were steady and gentle. They draped cloth over the krill , took it from his power-cramped fingers. Relative darkness poured through his eye-sockets as if they were empty pits, gaping for night. The dark spoke in Brinn's voice. “The lurker has been pained. It fears to be pained again.”

“Sooth,” the First muttered starkly. “Therefore it has given our deaths into the hands of its acolytes.”

Brinn helped Covenant to his feet. Blinking at numberless krill echoes, he fought to see. But the afterflares were too bright. He was still watching them turn to emerald when he heard Hollian's gasp. The Giants and Haruchai went rigid. Brinn's fingers dug reflexively into Covenant's arm.

By degrees, the white spots became orange and green-mudfire and skest . The acid-creatures thronged at the head of the peninsula, shimmering like religious ecstasy. They oozed forward slowly, not as if they were frightened, but rather as if they sought to prolong the anticipation of their advance.

Covenant's companions stared in the direction of the skest . But not at the skest .

Untouched amid the green forms, as if he were impervious to every conceivable vitriol, stood Vain.

His posture was one of relaxation and poise; his arms hung, slightly bent, at his sides. But at intervals he took a step, two steps, drew gradually closer to the leading edge of the skest . They broke against his legs and had no effect.

His gaze was unmistakably fixed on Linden.

In a flash of memory, Covenant saw Vain snatch Linden into his arms, leap down into a sea of graveling. The Demondim-spawn had returned from quicksand and loss to rescue her.

“Who-?” the First began.

“He is Vain,” Brinn replied, “given to ur-Lord Thomas Covenant by the Giant Saltheart Foamfollower among the Dead in Andelain.”

She cleared her throat, searching for a question which would produce a more useful answer. But before she could speak, Covenant heard a soft popping noise like the bursting of a bubble of mud.

At once, Vain came to a halt. His gaze flicked past the company, then faded into disfocus.

Covenant turned in time to see a short figure detach itself from the burning mud, step queasily onto the hard ground.

The figure was scarcely taller than the skest , and shaped like them, a misborn child without eyes or any other features. But it was made of mud. Flames flickered over it as it climbed from the fire, then died away, leaving a dull brown creature like a sculpture poorly wrought in clay. Reddish pockets embedded in its form glowed dully.

Paralyzed by recognition, Covenant watched as a second clay form emerged like a damp sponge from the mud. It looked like a crocodile fashioned by a blind man.

The two halted on the bank and faced the company. From somewhere within themselves, they produced modulated squishing noises which sounded eerily like language. Mud talking.

The First and Pitchwife stared, she sternly, he with a light like hilarity in his eyes. But Honninscrave stepped forward and bowed formally. With his lips, he made sounds which approximated those of the clay forms.

In a whisper, Pitchwife informed his companions, “They name themselves the sur-jheherrin . They ask if we desire aid against the skest . Honninscrave replies that our need is absolute.” The clay creatures spoke again. A look of puzzlement crossed Pitchwife's face. “The sur-jheherrin say that we will be redeemed. 'In the name of the Pure One,'” he added, then shrugged. “I do not comprehend it.”

The jheherrin . Covenant staggered inwardly as memories struck him like blows. Oh dear God.

The soft ones. They had lived in the caves and mud pits skirting Foul's Creche. They had been the Despiser's failures, the rejected mischances of his breeding dens. He had let them live because the torment of their craven lives amused him.

But he had misjudged them. In spite of their ingrown terror, they had rescued Covenant and Foamfollower from Lord Foul's minions, had taught Covenant and Foamfollower the secrets of Foul's Creche, enabling them to reach the thronehall and confront the Despiser. In the name of the Pure One-

The sur-jheherrin were clearly descendants of the soft ones. They had been freed from thrall, as their old legend had foretold. But not by Covenant, though he had wielded the power. His mind burned with remembrance; he could hear himself saying, because he had had no choice, Look at me. I'm not pure. I'm corrupt. The word jheherrin meant “the corrupt.” His reply had stricken the clay creatures with despair. And still they had aided him.

But Foamfollower — The Pure One. Burned clean by the caamora of Hotash Slay, he had cast down the Despiser, broken the doom of the jheherrin .

And now their inheritors lived in the mud and mire of Sarangrave Flat. Covenant clung to the sur-jheherrin with his eyes as if they were an act of grace, the fruit of Foamfollower's great clean heart, which they still treasured across centuries that had corroded all human memories of the Land.

The acid-creatures continued to advance, oblivious to Vain and the sur-jheherrin . The first skest were no more than five paces away, radiating dire emerald. Hergrom, Ceer, and Ham stood poised to sacrifice themselves as expensively as possible, though they must have known that even Haruchai were futile against so much green vitriol. Their expressionlessness appeared demonic in that light.

The two sur-jheherrin speaking with Honninscrave did not move. Yet they fulfilled their offer of aid. Without warning, the muck edging the peninsula began to seethe. Mud rose like a wave leaping shoreward, then resolved into separate forms. Sur-jheherrin like stunted apes, misrecollected reptiles, inept dogs. Scores of them came wetly forward, trailing fires which quickly died on their backs. They surged with surprising speed past the Haruchai . And more of them followed. Out of mud lit garishly by the lurker's fire, they arose to defend the company.

The forces met, vitriol and clay pouring bluntly into contact. There was no fighting, no impact of strength or skill. Skest and sur-jheherrin pitted their essential natures against each other. The skest were created to spill green flame over whatever opposed them. But the clay forms absorbed acid and fire. Each sur-jheherrin embraced one of the skest , drew the acid-creature into itself. For an instant, emerald glazed the mud. Then the green was quenched, and the sur-jheherrin moved to another skest .

Covenant watched the contest distantly. To his conflicted passions, the battle seemed to have no meaning apart from the sur-jheherrin themselves. While his eyes followed the struggle, his ears clinched every word of the dialogue between Honninscrave and the first mud-forms. Honninscrave went on questioning them as if he feared that the outcome of the combat was uncertain, and the survival of the Search might come to depend on what he could learn.