Stephen Donaldson - The Power That Preserves

The descent took a long time, but it was not particularly difficult. Foamfollower protected him all the way down each stage of the broken cliff. And the steeper drops were moderated by enough ledges and cracks and hardy scrub brush to make that whole stretch of the cliff passable. The Giant had no trouble finding a route Covenant could manage, and Covenant eventually gained a measure of confidence, so that he was able to move with less help down the last stages to the foothills.

When at last he reached the lower ground, he took his drained nerves straight to the pool at the foot of the Fall and dropped into the chill waters to wash away the accumulated sweat of his fear.

While Covenant bathed, Foamfollower filled his water jug and drank deeply at the pool. This might be the last safe water they would find. Then the Giant set out the graveling for Covenant. As the Unbeliever dried himself, he asked Foamfollower how long their food supplies would last.

The Giant grimaced. “Two days. Three or four, if we find aliantha a day or two into the Spoiled Plains. But we are far from Foul’ s Creche. Even if we were to run straight into Soulcrusher’s arms, we would have three or four foodless days within us before he made sustenance unnecessary.” Then he grinned. “But it is said that hunger teaches many things. My friend, a wealth of wisdom awaits us on this journey.”

Covenant shivered. He had had some experience with hunger. And now the possibility of starvation lay ahead of him; his forehead had been reinjured; he would have to walk a long distance on bare feet. One by one the conditions of his return to his own life were being met. As he tightened the sash of his robe, he muttered sourly, “I heard Mhoram say once that wisdom is only skin-deep. Or something like that. Which means that lepers must be the wisest people in the world.”

“Are they?” the Giant asked. “Are you wise, Unbeliever?”

“Who knows? If I am-wisdom is overrated.”

At this, Foamfollower’s grin broadened. “Perhaps it is-perhaps it is. My friend, we are the two wisest hearts in the Land-we who march thus weaponless and unredeemed into the very bosom of the Despiser. Verily, wisdom is like hunger. Perhaps it is a very fine thing-but who would willingly partake of it?”

Despite the absence of the wind, the air was still wintry. Knuckles of ice clenched the rocky borders of the pool where the spray of the Fall had frozen, and Foamfollower’s breath plumed wetly in the humid air. Covenant needed to move to warm himself, keep up his courage. “It’s not fine,” he grated, half to himself. “But it’s useful. Come on.”

Foamfollower repacked his graveling, then swung the sack onto his broad shoulder, and led Covenant away from Landsdrop along the river.

Night stopped them when they had covered only three or four leagues. But by that time they had left behind the foothills and the last vestiges of the un-Spoiled flatland which had at one time, ages ago in the history of the Earth, stretched from the Southron Wastes north to the Sarangrave and Lifeswallower, the Great Swamp. They were down in the bosque of the Ruinwash.

Grey, brittle, dead brush and trees — cottonwoods, junipers, once-beautiful tamarisks — stood up out of the dried mud on both sides of the stream, occupying ground which had once been part of the riverbed. But the Ruinwash had shrunk decades or centuries ago, leaving partially fertile mud on either side-mud in which a scattering of tough trees and brush had eked out a bare existence until Lord Foul’s preternatural winter had blasted them. As darkness soaked into the air as if it were oozing out of the ground, the trees became spectral shapes of forbidding which made the bosque almost impassable. Covenant resigned himself to camping there for the night, though the dried mud had an old, occluded reek, and the river made a slithering noise like an ambush in its course. He knew that he and Foamfollower would be safer if they travelled at night, but he was weary and did not believe the Giant could find his way in the cloud-locked dark.

Later, however, he found that the river gave off a light like lambent verdigris; the whole surface of the water glowed dimly. This light came, not from the water, but from the hot eels which flicked back and forth across the current. They had a hungry aspect, and their jaws were rife with teeth. Yet they made it possible for him and Foamfollower to resume their journey.

Even in the cynosural eel light, they did not go much farther. The destruction of the Staff had changed the balance of Lord Foul’s winter; without the wind to hold them, the massed energies of the clouds recoiled. In the deeper chill of darkness, they triggered rain out of the blind sky. Soon torrents fell through the damaged grasp of the clouds, crashed straight down onto the Lower Land as if the vaulting which held up the heavens had broken. Under those conditions, Foamfollower could not find his way. He and Covenant had no choice but to huddle together for warmth in the mud and try to sleep while they waited.

With the coming of dawn, the rain stopped, and Covenant and Foamfollower went on along the Ruinwash in the blurred light of morning. During that day, they saw the last of the aliantha ; as they penetrated into the Spoiled Plains, the mud became too dead for treasure-berries. The travellers kept themselves going on scant shares of their dwindling supplies. At night, the rains came again, soaking them until they seemed to have its dankness in the marrow of their bones.

The next day, an eagle spotted them through a gap in the grey trees. It cycled twice close over their heads, then soared away, screaming in mockery like a voice from the dead, “Foamfollower! Kinabandoner!”

“They’re after us,” said Covenant.

The Giant spat violently. ” Yes. They will hunt us down.” He found a smooth stone the size of Covenant’s two fists and carried it with him to throw at the eagle if it returned.

It did not come back that day, but the next-after another torrential downpour avalanched the Plains as if the cloud lid over the Land were a shattered sea-Lord Foul’s bird circled them twice, morning and afternoon. The first time, it taunted them until Foamfollower had hurled all the stones he could find nearby, then it slashed close to bark scornfully, “Kinabandoner! Groveller!”

The second time, Foamfollower kept one stone hidden. He waited until the eagle had swooped lower to jeer, then threw at it with deadly force. It survived by breaking the blow with its wings, but it flew limping away, barely able to stay aloft.

“Make haste,” Foamfollower growled. “That ill bird has been guiding the pursuit toward us. It is not far off.”

At the best pace Covenant could manage on his numb, battered feet, he pushed ahead through the bosque.

They stayed under tree cover as much as possible to ward against spying birds. This caution slowed them somewhat, but the largest drag on their progress was Covenant’s weariness. His injury and the ordeal of the Colossus appeared to have drained some essential resilience out of him. He got little sleep in the cold wet nights, and he felt that he was slowly starving on his share of the food. In dogged silence he shambled along league after league as if his fear of the hunt were the only thing that kept him moving. And that evening, in the gloaming verdigris of the eel fire, he consumed the last of Foamfollower’s supplies.

“Now what?” he muttered vaguely when he was done.

“We must resign ourselves. There is no more.”

Ah, hell! Covenant groaned to himself. He remembered vividly what had happened to him in the woods behind Haven Farm, when his self-imposed inanition had made him hysterical. The memory filled him with cold dread.

In turn, that dread called up other memories-recollections of his ex-wife, Joan, and his son, Roger. He felt an urge to tell Foamfollower about them, as if they were spirits he could exorcise by simply saying the right thing about them to the right person. But before he could find the words, his thoughts were scattered by the first attack of the hunt.