Stephen Donaldson - The Power That Preserves

Her appeal made him cringe, made him feel grotesque and unclean. In his pain, he wanted to turn his back on her, push her from him and walk away. Part of him was already shouting, You’re crazy, old woman! It’s your daughter I love! But he restrained himself. With his shoulders hunched like a strangler’s to choke the violence of his responses, he gripped Lena’s wrists and pulled her hands from his jacket. He held them up so that his fingers were directly in front of her face. “Look at my hands,” he rasped. “Look at my fingers.”

She stared at them wildly.

“Look at the sickness in them. They aren’t just cold-they’re sick, numb with sickness almost all the way across my palms. That’s my disease.”

“You are closed to me,” she said desolately.

“That’s leprosy, I tell you! It’s there-even if you’re blind to it, it’s there. And there’s only one way you can get it. Prolonged exposure. You might get it if you stayed around me long enough. And children-what’s marriage without children?” He could not keep the passion out of his voice. “Children are even more susceptible. They get it more easily- children and-and old people. When I get wiped out of the Land the next time, you’ll be left behind, and the only absolutely guaranteed legacy you’ll have from me is leprosy. Foul will make sure of it. On top of everything else, I’ll be responsible for contaminating the entire Land.”

“Covenant-beloved,” Lena whispered, “I beg you. Do not refuse ” Her eyes swam with tears, torn by a cruel effort to see herself as she really was. “Behold, I am frail and faulty. I have neither worth nor courage to preserve myself alone. I have given-Please, Thomas Covenant.” Before he could stop her, she dropped to her knees. “I beg-do not shame me in the eyes of my whole life.”

His defensive rage was no match for her. He snatched her up from her knees as if he meant to break her back, but then he held her tenderly, put all the gentleness of which he was capable into his face. For an instant, he felt he had in his hands proof that he-not Lord Foul-was responsible for the misery of the Land. And he could not accept that responsibility without rejecting her. What she asked him to do was to forget-

He knew that Foamfollower was watching him. But if Triock and Mhoram and Banner had been behind him as well-if even Trell and Atiaran had been present-he would not have changed his answer.

“No, Lena,” he said softly. “I don’t love you right-I don’t have the right kind of love to marry you. I’d only be cheating you. You’re beautiful — beautiful. Any other man wouldn’t wait for you to ask him. But I’m the Unbeliever, remember? I’m here for a reason.” With a sick twisting of his lips that was as close as he could come to a smile, he finished, “Berek Halfhand didn’t marry his Queen, either.”

His words filled him with disgust. He felt that he was telling her a lie worse than the lie of marrying her-that any comfort he might try to offer her violated the severe truth. But as she realized what he was saying, she caught hold of the idea and clasped it to her. She blinked rapidly at her tears, and the harsh effort of holding her confusion at bay faded from her face. In its place, a shy smile touched her lips. “Am I your Queen then, Unbeliever?” she asked in a tone of wonder.

Roughly, Covenant hugged her so that she could not see the savagery which white-knuckled his countenance. “Of course.” He forced up the words as if they were too thick for his aching throat. “No one else is worthy.”

He held her, half fearing she would collapse if he let her go, but after a long moment, she withdrew from his embrace. With a look that reminded him of her sprightly girlhood, she said, “Let us tell the Giant,” as if she wished to announce something better than a betrothal.

Together, they turned and climbed arm in arm up the ravine toward Saltheart Foamfollower.

When they reached him, they found that his buttressed visage was still wet with weeping. Grey ice sheened his face, hung like beads from his stiff beard. His hands were gripped and straining across his knees. “Foamfollower,” Lena said in surprise, “this is a moment of happiness. Why do you weep?”

His hands jerked up to scrub away the ice, and when it was gone, he smiled at her with wonderful fondness. “You are too beautiful, my Queen,” he told her gently. “You surpass me.”

His response made her shine with pleasure. For a moment, her old flesh blushed youthfully, and she met the Giant’s gaze with joy in her eyes. Then a recollection started her. “But I am remiss. I have been asleep, and you have not eaten. I must cook for you.” Turning lightly, she scampered down the ravine toward Foamfollower’s supplies.

The Giant glanced up at the chill sky, then looked at Covenant’s gaunt face. His cavernous eyes glinted sharply, as if he understood what Covenant had been through. As gently as he had spoken to Lena, he asked, “Do you now believe in the Land?”

“I’m the Unbeliever. I don’t change.”

“Do you not?”

“I am going to”-Covenant’s shoulders hunched-“exterminate Lord Foul the bloody Despiser. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“Oh, it is enough for me,” Foamfollower said with sudden vehemence. “I require nothing more. But it does not suffice for you. What do you believe-what is your faith?”

“I don’t know.”

Foamfollower looked away again at the weather. His heavy brows hid his eyes, but his smile seemed sad, almost hopeless. “Therefore I am afraid.”

Covenant nodded grimly, as if in agreement.

Nevertheless, if Lord Foul had appeared before him at that moment, he, Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and leper, would have tried to tear the Despiser’s heart out with his bare hands.

He needed to know how to use the white wild magic gold.

But there were no answers in the meal Lena cooked for him and Foamfollower, or in the grey remainder of the afternoon, which he spent huddled over the fire-stones with Lena resting drowsily against him, or in the dank, suffering twilight that finally brought his waiting to an end. When Foamfollower led the way eastward out of the ravine, Covenant felt that he understood nothing but the wind which blew through him like scorn for the impotence of sunlight and warmth. And after that he had no more time to think about it. All his attention was occupied with the work of stumbling numbly through the benighted hills.

Travelling was difficult for him. His body’s struggle to recover from injury and inanition drained his strength; the bitter cold drained his strength. He could not see where to place his feet, could not avoid tripping, falling, bruising himself on insensate dirt and rock. Yet he kept going, pushed himself after Foamfollower until the sweat froze on his forehead and his clothing grew crusted with stains of ice. His resolve held him. In time, he even became dimly grateful that his feet were numb, so that he could not feel the damage he was doing to himself.

He had no sense of duration or progress; he measured out the time in rest halts, in aliantha unexpectedly handed to him out of the darkness by Foamfollower. Such things sustained him. But eventually he stopped rubbing the ice from his nose and lips, from his forehead and his fanatical beard; he allowed the grey cold to hang like a mask on his features, as if he were becoming a creature of winter. And he stumbled on in the Giant’s wake.

When Foamfollower stopped at last, shortly before dawn, Covenant simply dropped to the snow and fell asleep.

Later, the Giant woke him for breakfast, and he found Lena sleeping beside him, curled against the cold. Her lips were faintly tinged with blue, and she shivered from time to time, unable to get warm. Her years showed clearly now in the lines of her face and in the frail, open-mouthed rise and fall of her breathing. Covenant roused her carefully, made her eat hot food until her lips lost their cold hue and the veins in her temples became less prominent. Then, despite her protests, he put her down in blankets and lay beside her until she went back to sleep.