Stephen Donaldson - The Power That Preserves

“Covenant!” he cried in protest.

Deliberately, Covenant’s gaze flicked away from the Giant-bored intensely into him and then jumped away, pulling Foamfollower’s eyes with it.

The Giant turned in spite of himself, and saw another Giant standing across the hall from him. The newcomer’s fists were clenched on his hips, and he was grinning savagely. Foamfollower recognized him at once; he was one of the three brothers who had fallen victim to the Ravers. Like Elena, this tormented soul had been resurrected to serve Soulcrusher.

Before Foamfollower could react, the door to the thronehall opened, then closed behind Covenant.

At the same time, all the other doors leaped open, pouring Stone-made monsters into the hall.

FOAMFOLLOWER wheeled around, saw that he had been surrounded. Scores of creatures had entered the hall; they were more than enough to deluge him, bury him under their weight if they did not choose to slay him with their weapons. But they did not attack. They spread out along the wall, bunched in tight formations before the doors, so that he could not escape. There they stopped. With the doors closed behind them, they stood leaning eagerly forward as if they yearned to hack him to pieces. But they left him to the dead Giant.

Foamfollower swung back to face the specter.

It advanced slowly, jeering at him with its malevolent grin. “Greetings, Foamfollower,” it spat. “Kinabandoner. Comrade! I have come to congratulate you. You serve the master well. Not content merely to desert our people in their time of doom, so that our entire race was extirpated from the Land, you have now delivered this groveller and his effectless white gold into the hands of the Despiser, Satansheart and Soulcrusher. Oh, well done! I give you greeting and praise, comrade!” It ejaculated the word comrade as if it were a supreme affront. “I am Kinslaughterer. It was I who slew-adult and child-every Giant in The Grieve. Behold the fruit of your life, Kinabandoner. Behold and despair!”

Foamfollower retreated a few steps, but his eyes did not for an instant quail from the dead Giant.

“Retribution!” Kinslaughterer sneered. “I see it in your face. You do not think of despair-you are too blind to perceive what you have done. By the master! You do not even think of your despicable friend. You have retribution in your heart, comrade! You behold me, and believe that if all else in your life fails, you have now at least been made able to exact vengeance for your loss. For your crime! Kinabandoner, I see it in you. It is the dearest desire of your heart to rend me limb from limb with your own hands. Fool! Do I have the appearance of one who fears you?”

While he held the specter’s gaze, Foamfollower gauged his position measured distances around him. Kinslaughterer’s words affected him. In them, he saw the sweetness of retribution. He knew the fury of killing, the miserable, involuntary delight of crushing flesh with his hands. He quivered as if he were eager, poised the gnarled might of his muscles for a leap.

“Attempt me, then,” the dead Giant went on. “Unleash the lust which fills you. Do you believe you can vindicate yourself against me? Are you so blind? Comrade! There is nothing that justifies you. If you shed blood enough to wash the Land from east to west, you cannot wash out the ill of yourself. Imbecile! Anile fool! If the master did not control you, you would do his work for him so swiftly that he would be unable to take pleasure in it. Come then, comrade! Attempt me. I am slain already. How will you bring me to death again?”

”I will attempt it,” Foamfollower grated softly, “in my own way.” The specter’s unnecessary goading told him what he needed to know. The creatures could have slain him at any time-yet they waited while Kinslaughterer strove to provoke him. Therefore Soulcrusher still had something to gain from him; therefore Covenant was still alive, still unbeaten. Perhaps Lord Foul hoped to use Foamfollower himself against the Unbeliever.

But Foamfollower had survived the caamora of Hotash Slay. He poised himself, his whole body tensed. Yet when he sprang suddenly into motion, he did not attack Kinslaughterer. Straining mightily, thrusting with all the power of his legs, he launched himself at the guards before the door of the thronehall.

They ducked under the suddenness of his assault. He dove headlong over them, forearms braced, so that his entire force struck the doors.

They had not been made to withstand such an impact. With a sharp cry of splintering stone, they burst inward.

Foamfollower fell in a flurry of door shards, somersaulted, snapped to his feet in the thronehall of Ridjeck Thome.

The room was a wide round hall like the one he had just left, but it had fewer doors, and its ceiling was far higher, as if to accommodate the immense powers which occupied it. Opposite Foamfollower was the great throne itself. On a low mound against the far wall, old grisly rock had been upreared to form the Despiser’s seat in the shape of jaws, raw hooked teeth bared to grip and tear. It and its base were the only things he had seen in Foul’s Creche which were not perfectly carved, utterly polished. It appeared to have been irremediably crippled, grotesqued, by the age-long weight of Lord Foul’s malice. It looked like a prophecy or foretaste of ultimate doom for all Ridjeck Thome’s immaculate rock.

Set into the floor directly before it was the Illearth Stone.

The Stone was not as large as Foamfollower had expected it to be; it did not appear so big or heavy that he could not have lifted it in his arms. Yet its radiance staggered him like the blow of a prodigious fist. It was not extremely bright-its illumination in the thronehall was only a little stronger than the light elsewhere-but it blazed in its setting like an incarnation of absolute cold. It pulsed like a mad heart, sent out unfetterable gouts and flares of force, radiated violently its power for corruption. Foamfollower slammed into the glare and Stopped as if he could already feel the gelid emerald turning his skin to ice.

He stared at the Stone for a moment, horrified by its strength. But then his staggered senses became aware of another might in the thronehall. This power seemed oddly subdued in comparison to the Stone. But it was only subtler, more insidious-not weaker. As Foamfollower turned toward it, he knew that it was the Stone’s master.

Lord Foul.

He located the Despiser more by tactile impression than by sight. Lord Foul was essentially invisible, though he cast an impenetrable blankness in the air like the erect shadow of a man-a shadow of absence rather than presence which showed where he would have been if he had been physically corporeal-and around the shadow shone a penumbra of glistering green. From within it, he reeked of attar.

He stood to one side of the Stone, with his back to the door and the Giant. And before him, facing Foamfollower, was Thomas Covenant.

They were alone; after delivering Covenant, the ur-vile had left the thronehall.

Covenant seemed unaware of the chains shackling his wrists. He did not appear to be struggling at all. He was already in the last stages of starvation and cold. Pain dripped like dank sweat down his emaciated cheeks; and his gaunt, desolate eyes met Lord Foul as if the Despiser’s power were clenched in the ugly wound on his forehead.

Neither of them took any notice of Foamfollower’s loud entrance; they were concentrated on each other to the exclusion of everything else. Some interchange had taken place between them-something Foamfollower had missed. But he saw the result. Just as he focused his attention on Lord Foul and Covenant, the Despiser raised one penumbral arm and struck Covenant across the mouth.