Stephen Donaldson - The Power That Preserves

Elena! Covenant groaned thickly. They haven’t told her-she doesn’t understand-Hellfire.

For a moment, he ached under his helplessness, his inability to speak. But then a hoarse shout from the Stonedown rescued him. Looking down, he saw people standing in the centre of the village with their swords and spears upraised. Beyond them, the surviving marauders fled for their lives toward the open plains. A handful of the defenders gave savage pursuit, harried the creatures to prevent as many as possible from escaping.

Immediately, Covenant started down the rocks. He heard Lena shout word of the victory to Slen and the other people at the mouth of the cave, but he did not wait for her or them. He ran down out of the foothills as if he too were fleeing-fleeing from Lena, or from his fear for Foamfollower, he did not know which. As swiftly as he could without slipping in the snow, he hurried toward Mithil Stonedown.

But when he dashed between the houses and stumbled in among the hacked corpses, he lurched to a halt. All around him the snow and stone were spattered with blood-livid incarnadine patches, heavy swaths of red-grey serum diseased by streaks of green. Stonedownors-some of them torn limb from limb-lay confused amid the litter of Lord Foul’s creatures. But the perverse faces and forms of the creatures were what drew Covenant’s attention. Even in death, they stank of the abomination which had been practiced upon them by their maker, and they appalled him more than ur-viles or kresh or discoloured moons. They were so entirely the victims of Foul’s contempt. The sight and smell of them made his guts heave. He dropped to his knees in the disfigured snow and vomited as if he were desperate to purge himself of his kinship with these creatures.

Lena caught up with him there. When she saw him, she gave a low cry and flung her arms around him. “What is wrong?” she moaned. “Oh, beloved, you are ill.”

Her use of the word beloved stung him like acid flung from the far side °f Elena’s lost grave. It drove him reeling to his feet. Lena tried to help him, but he pushed her hands away. Into the concern of her face, he cried, “Don’t touch me. Don’t.” Jerking brokenly, his hands gestured at the bodies around him. “They’re lepers. Lepers like me. This is what Foul wants to do to everything.” His mouth twisted around the words as if they shared the gall of his nausea.

Several Stonedownors had gathered near him. Triock was among them. His hands were red, and blood ran from a cut along the line of his jaw, but when he spoke, he only sounded bitterer, harder. “It boots nothing to say that they have been made to be what they are. Still they shed blood-they ravage-they destroy. They must be prevented.”

“They’re like me.” Covenant turned panting toward Triock as if he meant to hurl himself at the Stonedownor’s throat. But when he looked up he saw Foamfollower standing behind Triock. The Giant had survived a fearsome struggle. The muscles of his arms quivered with exhaustion. His leather jerkin hung from his shoulders in shreds, and all across his chest were garish red sores-wounds inflicted by the suckers of the rock destroyer. But a sated look glazed his deep-set eyes, and the vestiges of a fierce grin clung to his lips.

Covenant struggled for breath in the bloody air of the Stonedown. The sight of Foamfollower triggered a reaction he could not control. “Get your people together,” he rasped at Triock. “I’ve decided what I’m going to do.”

The hardness of Triock’s mouth did not relent, but his eyes softened as he searched Covenant’s gaze. “Such choices can wait a little longer,” he replied stiffly. “We have other duties. We must cleanse Mithil Stonedown — rid our homes of this stain.” Then he turned and walked away.

Soon all the people who were whole or strong enough were at work. First they buried their fallen friends and kindred in honourable rocky cairns high in the eastern slopes of the valley. And when that grim task was done, they gathered together all the creature corpses and carted this hacked and broken rubble downriver across the bridge to the west bank of the Mithil. There they built a pyre like a huge warning blaze to any marauders in the South Plains and burned the dead creatures until even the bones were reduced to white ash. Then they returned to the Stonedown. With clean snow, they scrubbed it from rim to centre until all the blood and gore had been washed from the houses and swept from the ground of the village.

Covenant did not help them. After his recent exertions, he was too weak for such labour. But he felt cold, upright, and passionate, ballasted by the new granite of his purpose. He went with Lena, Slen, and the Circle of elders to the banks of the river, and there helped treat the injuries of the Stonedownors. He cleaned and bound wounds, removed slivers of broken weapons, amputated mangled fingers and toes. When even the elders faltered, he took the blue-hot blade and used it to clean the sores which covered Foamfollower’s chest and back. His fingers trembled at the task, and his halfhand slipped on the knife’s handle, but he pressed fire into the Giant’s oaken muscles until all the sucker wounds had been seared.

Foamfollower took a deep breath that shuddered with pain, and said, “Thank you, my friend. That is a grateful fire. You have made it somewhat like the caamora .” But Covenant threw down the blade without answering, and went to plunge his shaking hands into the icy waters of the Mithil. All the while, a deep rage mounted within him, grew up his soul like slow vines reaching toward savagery.

Later, when all the wounded had been given treatment, Slen and the elders cooked a meal for the whole village. Sitting in the new cleanliness of the open centre, the people ate hot savoury stew with unleavened bread, cheese, and dried fruit. Covenant joined them. Throughout the meal, Lena tended him like a servant. But he kept his eyes down, stared at the ground to avoid her face and all other faces; he did not wish to be distracted from the process taking place within him. With cold determination, he ate every scrap of food offered to him. He needed nourishment for his purpose.

After the meal, Triock made new arrangements for the protection of the Stonedown. He sent scouts back out to the Plains, designed tentative plans against another attack, asked for volunteers to carry word of the rock-destroying creatures to the Stonedown’s nearest neighbours, thirty leagues away. Then at last he turned to the matter of Covenant’s decision.

Yeurquin and Quirrel sat down on either side of Triock as he faced the village. Before he began, he glanced at Foamfollower, who stood nearby. Obliquely, Covenant observed that in the place of his ruined jerkin Foamfollower now wore an armless sheepskin cloak. It did not close across his chest, but it covered his shoulders and back like a vest. He nodded in response to Triock’s mute question, and Triock said, “Well, then. Let us delay no longer.” In a rough, sardonic tone, he added, “We have had rest enough.

“My friends, here is ur-Lord Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and white gold wielder. For good or ill, the Giant and I have brought him to the Land. You know the lore which has been abroad in the Land since that day seven and forty years ago when the Unbeliever first came to Mithil Stonedown from Kevin’s Watch. You see that he comes in the semblance of Berek Halfhand, Heartthew and Lord-Fatherer, and bears with him the talisman of the wild magic which destroys peace. You have heard the ancient song:

And with the one word of truth or treachery,

he will save or damn the Earth

because he is mad and sane,

cold and passionate,

lost and found.

He is among us now so that he may fulfil all his prophecies.