Stephen Donaldson - Lord Foul's Bane

Wonderful! Covenant growled corrosively. Terrific! His hands itched with an intense urge to throttle someone.

Prothall continued: “If Drool's eyes are turned away, it may be that we can bend the Word without breaking.” He took a deep breath, then asserted, “I believe it can be done. This Word is not as pure and dangerous as might be.” He turned to Covenant. “But I fear for you, ur-Lord.”

“For me?” Covenant reacted as if the High Lord had accused him of something. “Why?”

“I fear that the mere closeness of your ring to the Word may undo it. So you must come last. And even then we may be caught within the catacombs, with no bridge to bear us out again.”

Last? He had a sudden vision of being forsaken or trapped here, blocked by that deep cleft from the escape he needed. He wanted to protest, Let me go first. If I can make it, anybody can. But he saw the folly of that argument. Forbear, he urged himself. Keep the bargain. His fear made him sound bitter as he grated, “Get on with it. They're bound to send some new guards one of these days.”

Prothall nodded. With a last measuring look at Covenant, he turned away. He and Mhoram went up onto the bridge to engage the Word.

Tuvor and Terrel followed carrying coils of clingor which they attached to the Lords' waists and anchored at the foot of the bridge. Thus secured against the collapse of the span, Prothall and Mhoram ascended cautiously until they were only an arm's length from the invisible Word. There they knelt together and started their song.

When the bottom of the Word became visible in crimson, they placed their staffs parallel to it on the stone before them. Then, with torturous care, they rolled their staffs directly under the iridescent power. For one bated moment, they remained still in an attitude of prayer as if beseeching their wood not to interrupt the current flowing past their faces. A heart-stopping flicker replied in the red shimmer. But the Lords went on singing-and shortly the Word steadied.

Bracing themselves, they started the most difficult part of their task. They began lifting the inner ends of their staffs.

With a quick intake of wonder and admiration, the company saw the lower edge of the Word bend, leaving a low, tented gap below it.

When the peak of the gap was more than a foot high, the Lords froze. Instantly, Bannor and two other Bloodguard dashed up the bridge, unrolling a rope as they ran. One by one, they crawled through the gap and took their end of the lifeline to safe ground beyond the span.

As soon as Bannor had attached his end of the rope, Mhoram took hold of Prothall's staff. The High Lord wormed through the gap, then held the staffs for Mhoram. By the time Mhoram had regained his position beside Prothall, old Birinair was there and ready to pass. Behind him in rapid single file went the Eoman, followed by Quaan and Lithe.

In turn, Tuvor and Terrel slipped under the Word and anchored their ropes to the two Lords beyond the chasm. Then, moving at a run, the last Bloodguard slapped the central lifeline around Covenant and made their way through the gap.

He was left alone.

In a cold sweat of anger and fear, he started up the bridge. He felt the two pillars of rocklight as if they were scrutinizing him. He went up the span fiercely, cursing Foul, and cursing himself for his fear. He did not give a glance to the chasm. Staring at the gap, he ground his rage into focus, and approached the shimmering tapestry of power. As he drew nearer, his ring ached on his hand. The bridge seemed to grow thinner as if it were dissolving under him. The Word became starker, dominating his vision more and more.

But he kept his hold on his rage. Even a leper! He reached the gap, knelt before it, looked momentarily through the shimmer at the Lords. Their faces ran with sweat, and their voices trembled in their song. He clenched his hands around the staff of Baradakas, and crawled into the gap.

As he passed under the Word, he heard an instant high keening like a whine of resistance. For that instant, a cold red flame burst from his ring.

Then he was through, and the bridge and the Word were still intact.

He stumbled down the span, flinging off the clingor lifeline. When he was safe, he turned long enough to see Prothall and Mhoram remove their staffs from under the Word. Then he stalked out of the vault of Warrenbridge into the dark tunnel of the roadway. He felt Bannor's presence at his shoulder almost at once, but he did not stop until the darkness against which he thrust himself was thick enough to seem impenetrable.

In frustration and congested fear, he groaned, “I want to be alone. Why don't you leave me alone?”

With the repressed lilt of his Haruchai inflection, Bannor responded, “You are ur-Lord Covenant. We are the Bloodguard. Your life is in our care.”

Covenant glared into the ineluctable dark around him, and thought about the unnatural solidity of the Bloodguard. What binding principle made their flesh seem less mortal than the gutrock of Mount Thunder? A glance at his ring showed him that its incarnadine gleam had almost entirely faded. He found that he was jealous of Bannor's dispassion; his own pervasive irrectitude offended him. On the impulse of a ferocious intuition, he returned, “That isn't enough.”

He could envision Bannor's slight, eloquent shrug without seeing it. In darkness he waited defiantly until the company caught up with him.

But when he was again marching in his place in the Quest-when Birinair's wan flame had passed by him, treading as if transfixed by leadership the invisible directions of the roadway-the night of the catacombs crowded toward him like myriad leering spectators, impatient for bloodshed, and he suffered a reaction against the strain. His shoulders began to tremble, as if he had been hanging by his arms too long, and cold petrifaction settled over his thoughts.

The Word of Warning revealed that Lord Foul was expecting them, knew they would not fall victim to Drool's army. Drool could not have formed the Word, much less made it so apposite to white gold. Therefore it served the Despiser's purposes rather than Drool's. Perhaps it was a test of some kind-a measure of the Lords' strength and resourcefulness, an indication of Covenant's vulnerability. But whatever it was, it was Lord Foul's doing. Covenant felt sure that the Despiser knew everything-planned, arranged, made inevitable all that happened to the Quest, every act and decision. Drool was ignorant, mad, manipulated; the Cavewight probably failed to understand half of what he achieved under Lord Foul's hand.

But in his bones Covenant had known such things from the beginning. They did not surprise him; rather, he saw them as symptoms of another, a more essential threat. This central peril-a peril which so froze his mind that only his flesh seemed able to react by trembling-had to do with his white gold ring. He perceived the danger clearly because he was too numb to hide from it. The whole function of the compromise, the bargain, he had made with the Ranyhyn, was to hold the impossibility and the actuality of the Land apart, in equipoise-Back off! Let me be! — to keep them from impacting into each other and blasting his precarious hold on life. But Lord Foul was using his ring to bring crushing together the opposite madnesses which he needed so desperately to escape.

He considered throwing the ring away. But he knew he could not do it. The band was too heavy with remembered lost love and honour and mutual respect to be tossed aside. And an old beggar

If his bargain failed, he would have nothing left with which to defend himself against the darkness-no power or fertility or coherence-nothing but his own capacity for darkness, his violence, his ability to kill. That capacity led-he was too numb to resist the conclusion-as inalterably as leprosy to the destruction of the Land.