Stephen Donaldson - The Power That Preserves

“He may harm us!”

“It is not too late. Drown him.”

“No.” The sterner voice stiffened. “We chose this risk.”

“Oh! If the Maker learns-!”

“We chose, I say! To save and then slay-that would surely be Maker-work. Better that he should harm us. I will”- the voice hesitated fearfully- “I will provide light myself if I must.”

“Stand ready!” speakers chorused, spreading an alarm against Covenant.

A moment later, he heard an odd slippery noise like the sound of a stick being thrust through mud. A dim red glow the colour of rocklight opened in the darkness a few feet from his face.

The light came from a grotesque figure of mud standing on the floor of the chamber. It was about two feet tall, and it faced him like a clay statue formed by the unadept hands of a child. He could discern awkward limbs, vague misshapen features, but no eyes, ears, mouth, nose. Reddish pockets of mud in its brown form shone dully, giving off a scanty illumination.

He found that he was in the end of a tunnel. Near him was a wide pit of bubbling mud, and beyond it the walls, floor, and ceiling came together, sealing the space. But in the opposite direction the tunnel stretched away darkly.

There, at the limit of the light, stood a dozen or more short clay forms like the one in front of him.

They did not move, made no sound. They looked inanimate, as if they had been left behind by whatever creature had formed the tunnel. But the tunnel contained no one or nothing else that might have spoken. Covenant gaped at the gnarled shapes, and tried to think of something to say.

Abruptly, the mud pit began to seethe. Directly in front of Covenant, several more clay forms hopped suddenly out of the mire, dragging two huge feet with them. The glowing shape quickly retreated down the tunnel to make room for them. In an instant, they had heaved Foamfollower out onto the floor of the tunnel and had backed away from him to join the forms which stood watching Covenant.

Foamfollower’s Giantish lungs had sustained him; he needed no time at all to recover. He flung himself around in the constricted space and lurched snarling toward the clay forms with rage in his eyes and one heavy fist upraised.

At once, the sole light went out. Amid shrill cries of fear, the mud creatures scudded away down the tunnel.

“Foamfollower!” Covenant shouted urgently. “They saved us!”

He heard the Giant come to a stop, heard him panting hoarsely. “Foamfollower,” he repeated. “Giant!”

Foamfollower breathed deeply for a moment, then said, “My friend?” In the darkness, his voice sounded cramped, too full of suppressed emotions. “Are you well?”

“Well?” Covenant felt momentarily unbalanced on the brink of hysteria. But he steadied himself. “They didn’t hurt me. Foamfollower-I think they saved us.”

The Giant panted a while longer, regaining his self-command. “Yes,” he groaned. “Yes. Now I have taught them to fear us.” Then, projecting his voice down the tunnel, he said, “Please pardon me. You have indeed saved us. I have little restraint-yes, I am quick to anger, too quick. Yet without purposing to do so you wrung my heart. You took my friend and left me. I feared him dead-despair came upon me. Bannor of the Bloodguard told us to look for help wherever we went. Fool that I was, I did not look for it so near to Soulcrusher’s demesne. When you took me also, I had no thought left but fury. I crave your pardon.”

Empty silence answered him out of the darkness.

“Ah, hear me!” he called intently. “You have saved us from the hands of the Despiser. Do not abandon us now.”

The silence stretched, then broke. “Despair is Maker-work,” a voice said. “It was not our intent.”

“Do not trust them!” other voices cried. “They are hard.”

But the shuffling noise of feet came back toward Covenant and Foamfollower, and several of the clay forms lit themselves as they moved, so that the tunnel was filled with light. The creatures advanced cautiously, stopped well beyond the Giant’s reach. “We also ask your pardon,” said the leader as firmly as it could.

” Ah, you need not ask,” Foamfollower replied. ” It may be that I am slow to recognize my friends-but when I have recognized them, they have no cause to fear me. I am Saltheart Foamfollower, the”- he swallowed as if the words threatened to choke him- “the last of the Seareach Giants. My friend is Thomas Covenant, ur-Lord and bearer of the white gold.”

“We know,” the leader said. “We have heard. We are the jheherrin — the aussat jheherrin Befylam . The Maker-place has no secret that the jheherrin have not heard. You were spoken of. Plans were made against you. The jheherrin debated and chose to aid you.”

“If the Maker learns,” a voice behind the leader quavered, “we are doomed.”

“That is true. If he guesses at our aid, he will no longer suffer us. We fear for our lives. But you are his enemies. And the legends say-“

Abruptly, the leader stopped, turned to confer with the other jheherrin . Covenant watched in fascination as they whispered together. From a distance, they all looked alike, but closer inspection revealed that they were as different as the clay work of different children. They varied in size, shape, hue, timidity, tone of voice. Yet they shared an odd appearance of unsolidity. They bulged and squished when they moved as if they were only held together by a fragile skin of surface tension-as if any jar or blow might reduce them to amorphous wet mud.

After a short conference, the leader returned. Its voice quivered as if it were afraid of its own audacity as it said, “Why have you come? You dare-What is your purpose?”

Foamfollower answered grimly, so that the jheherrin would believe him, “It is our purpose to destroy Lord Foul the Despiser.”

Covenant winced at the bald statement. But he could not deny it. How else could he describe what he meant to do?

The jheherrin conferred again, then announced rapidly, anxiously, “It cannot be done. Come with us.”

The suddenness of this made it sound like a command, though the leader’s voice was too tremulous to carry much authority. Covenant felt impelled to protest, not because he had any objection to following the jheherrin , but because he wanted to know why they considered his task impossible. But they forestalled him by the celerity of their withdrawal; before he could frame a question, half the lights were gone and the rest were going.

Foamfollower shrugged and motioned Covenant ahead of him down the tunnel. Covenant nodded. With a groan of weariness, he began to crouch along behind the jheherrin .

They moved with unexpected speed. Bulging and oozing at every step, they half trotted and half poured their way down the tunnel. Covenant could not keep up with them. In his cramped crouch, his lungs ached on the stale air, and his feet slipped erratically in the slimy mud. Foamfollower’s pace was even slower; the low ceiling forced him to crawl. But some of the jheherrln stayed behind with them, guiding them past the bends and intersections of the passage. And before long the tunnel began to grow larger. As the number and complexity of the junctions increased, the ceiling rose. Soon Covenant was able to stand erect, and Foamfollower could move at a crouch. Then they travelled more swiftly.

Their journey went on for a long time. Through intricate clusters of intersections where tunnels honeycombed the earth, and the travellers caught glimpses of other creatures, all hastening the same way, through mud so wet and thick that Covenant could barely wade it and shiny coal-lodes reflecting the rocklight of the jheherrin garishly, they tramped for leagues with all the speed Covenant could muster. But that speed was not great, and it became steadily less as the leagues passed. He had been two days without food and closer to ten without adequate rest. The caked mud throbbed like fever on his forehead. And the numbness in his hands and feet-a lack of sensation which had nothing to do with the cold-was spreading.