Stephen Donaldson - Lord Foul's Bane

Bannor lifted Covenant to his feet. The Bloodguard urged him toward the rest of the company, but he broke free and stumbled a few steps up the slope, straining his eyes toward the crevice. “Drool! What happened to Drool?” His eyes failed him. He stopped, wavered uncertainly, raged, “I can't see!”

Mhoram hastened to him, and Covenant repeated his question, shouting it into the Lord's face.

Mhoram replied gently, “Drool is there, in the crevice. Power that he could not master destroys him. He no longer knows what he does. In a moment, the Fire-Lions will consume him.”

Covenant strove to master his voice by biting down on it. “No!” he hissed. “He's just another victim. Foul planned this all along:” Despite his clamped teeth, his voice sounded broken.

Comfortingly, Mhoram touched his shoulder. “Be at peace, Unbeliever. We have done all we can. You need not condemn yourself.”

Abruptly, Covenant found that his rage was gone collapsed into dust. He felt blasted and wrecked, and he sank to the ground as if his bones could no longer hold him. His eyes had a tattered look, like the sails of a ghost ship. Without caring what he did, he pushed his wedding band back onto his ring finger.

The rest of the company was moving toward him. They had given up their attempt at flight; together, they watched the progress of the Lions. The midnight clouds cast a gloom over the whole mountain, and through the dimness the pouncing fires blazed and coruscated like beasts of sun flame. They sprang down the walls into the ravine, and some of them bounded upward toward the crevice.

Lord Mhoram finally shook himself free of his entrancement. “Call your Ranyhyn,” he commanded Bannor. “The Bloodguard can save themselves. Take the Staff and the Second Ward. Call the Ranyhyn and escape.”

Bannor met Mhoram's gaze for a long moment, measuring the Lord's order. Then he refused stolidly. “One of us will go. To carry the Staff and Ward to Lord's Keep. The rest remain.”

“Why? We cannot escape. You must live-to serve the Lords who must carry on this war.”

“Perhaps.” Bannor shrugged slightly. “Who can say? High Lord Kevin ordered us away, and we obeyed. We will not do such a thing again.”

“But this death is useless!” cried Mhoram.

“Nevertheless.” The Bloodguard's tone was as blank as iron. Then he added, “But you can call Hynaril. Do so, Lord.”

“No,” Mhoram sighed with a tired smile of recognition. “I cannot. How could I leave so many to die?”

Covenant only half listened. He felt like a derelict, and he was picking among the wreckage of his emotions, in search of something worth salvaging. But part of him understood. He put the two fingers of his right hand between his lips and gave one short, piercing whistle.

All the company stared at him. Quaan seemed to think that the Unbeliever had lost his mind; Mhoram's eyes jumped at wild guesses. But Manethrall Lithe tossed her cord high in the air and crowed, “The Ranyhyn! Mane of the World! He calls them!”

“How?” protested Quaan. “He refused them.”

“They reared to him!” she returned with a nickering laugh. “They will come.”

Covenant had stopped listening altogether. Something was happening to him, and he lurched to his feet to meet it upright. The dimensions of his situation were changing. To his blurred gaze, the comrades of the company grew slowly harder and solider-took on the texture of native rock. And the mountain itself became increasingly adamantine. It seemed as immutable as the cornerstone of the world. He felt veils drop from his perception; he saw the unclouded fact of Gravin Threndor in all its unanswerable power. He paled beside it; his flesh grew thin, transient. Air as thick as smoke blew through him, chilling his bones. The throat of his soul contracted in silent pain. “What's happening to me?”

Around the cliff edge to the south, Ranyhyn came galloping. Like a blaze of hope, they raced the down rush of the Lions. At once, a hoarse cheer broke from the warriors. “We are saved!” Mhoram cried. “There is time enough!” With the rest of the company, he hurried forward to meet the swift approach of the Ranyhyn.

Covenant felt that he had been left alone. “What's happening to me?” he repeated dimly toward the hard mountain.

But Prothall was still at his side. Covenant heard the High Lord say in a kind old voice that seemed as loud as thunder, "Drool is dead. He was your summoner, and with his death the call ends. That is the way of such power.

“Farewell, Unbeliever! Be true! You have wrought greatly for us. The Ranyhyn will preserve us. And with the Staff of Law and the Second Ward, we will not be unable to defend against the Despiser's ill. Take heart. Despair and bitterness are not the only songs in the world.”

But Covenant wailed in mute grief. Everything around him-Prothall and the company and the Ranyhyn and the Fire-Lions and the mountain-became too solid for him. They overwhelmed his perceptions, passed beyond his senses into grey mist. He clutched about him and felt nothing. He could not see; the Land left the range of his eyes. It was too much for him, and he lost it.

GREY mist swirled around him for a long convulsive moment. Then it began to smear, and he lost it as well. His vision blurred, as if some hard god had rubbed a thumb across it. He blinked rapidly, tried to reach up to squeeze his eyes; but something soft prevented his hand. His sight remained blank.

He was waking up, though he felt more as if he were dropping into grogginess.

Gradually, he became able to identify where he was. He lay in a bed with tubular protective bars on the sides. White sheets covered him to his chin. Grey curtains shut him off from the other patients in the room. A fluorescent light stared past him emptily from the ceiling. The air was faintly tinged with ether and germicide. A call button hung at the head of the bed.

All his fingers and toes were numb.

Nerves don't regenerate, of course they don't, they don't—

This was important-he knew it was important-but for some reason it did not carry any weight with him. His heart was too hot with other emotions to feel that particular ice.

What mattered to him was that Prothall and Mhoram and the Quest had survived. He clung to that as if it were proof of sanity-a demonstration that what had happened to him, that what he had done, was not the product of madness, self-destruction. They had survived; at least his bargain with the Ranyhyn had accomplished that much. They had done exactly what Lord Foul wanted them to do-but they had survived.

At least he was not guilty of their deaths, too. His inability to use his ring, to believe in his ring, had not made Wraiths of them. That was his only consolation for what he had lost.

Then he made out two figures standing at the foot of the bed. One of them was a woman in white-a nurse. As he tried to focus on her, she said, “Doctor-he's regaining consciousness.”

The doctor was a middle-aged man in a brown suit. The flesh under his eyes sagged as if he were weary of all human pain, but his lips under his greying moustache were gentle. He approached along the side of the bed, touched Covenant's forehead for a moment, then pulled up Covenant's eyelids and shined a small light at his pupils.

With an effort, Covenant focused on the light.

The doctor nodded, and put his flashlight away. “Mr. Covenant?”

Covenant swallowed at the dryness in his throat.

“Mr. Covenant.” The doctor held his face close to Covenant's, and spoke quietly, calmly. “You're in the hospital. You were brought here after your run-in with that police car. You've been unconscious for about four hours.”

Covenant lifted his head and nodded to show that he understood.