Stephen Donaldson - Lord Foul's Bane

But the thought of the stair hurt him. How could he negotiate that descent? He could not so much as look over the parapet without dizziness. When Lena repeated, “Come,” he shook his head. He lacked the courage. Yet he had to keep himself active somehow. To Lena's puzzlement, he said, “How long ago was this Desolation?”

“I do not know,” she replied soberly. “But the people of the South Plains came back across the mountains from the bare Wastes twelve generations past. And it is said that they were forewarned by High Lord Kevin-they escaped, and lived in exile in the wilderness by nail and tooth and rhadhamaerl lore for five hundred years. It is a legacy we do not forget. At fifteen, each of us takes the Oath of Peace, and we live for the life and beauty of the Land.”

He hardly heard her; he was not specifically interested in what she said. But he needed the sound of her voice to steady him while he searched himself for strength. With an effort, he found another question he could ask. Breathing deeply, he said, “What were you doing in the mountains-why were you up where you could see me here?”

“I was stone-questing,” she answered. “I am learning suru-pa-maerl . Do you know this craft?”

“No,” he said between breaths. “Tell me.”

"It is a craft I am learning from Acence my mother's sister, and she learned it from Tomal, the best Craftmaster in the memory of our Stonedown. He also studied for a time in the Loresraat. But suru-pa-maerl is a craft of making images from stones without binding or shaping. I walk the hills and search out the shapes of rocks and pebbles. And when I discover a form that I understand, I take it home and find a place for it, balancing or interlocking with other forms until a new form is made.

“Sometimes, when I am very brave, I smooth a roughness to make the joining of the stones steadier. In this way, I remake the broken secrets of the Earth, and give beauty to the people.”

Vaguely, Covenant murmured, “It must be hard to think of a shape and then find the rocks to fit it.”

“That is not the way. I look at the stones, and seek for the shapes that are already in them. I do not ask the Earth to give me a horse. The craft is in learning to see what it is the Earth chooses to offer. Perhaps it will be a horse.”

“I would like to see your work.” Covenant paid no attention to what he was saying. The stairs beckoned him like the seductive face of forgetfulness, in which lepers lost their self-protective disciplines, their hands and feet, their lives.

But he was dreaming. The way to endure a dream was to flow with it until it ended. He had to make that descent in order to survive. That need outweighed all other considerations.

Abruptly, convulsively, he hauled himself to his feet. Planting himself squarely in the centre of the circle, he ignored the mountain and the sky, ignored the long fall below him, and gave himself a thorough examination. Trembling, he probed his still living nerves for aches or twinges, scanned his clothing for snags, rents, inspected his numb hands.

He had to put that stair behind him.

He could survive it because it was a dream-it could not kill him-and because he could not stand all this darkness beating about his ears.

“Now, listen,” he snapped at Lena. “I've got to go first. And don't give me that confused look. I told you I'm a leper. My hands and feet are numb-no feeling. I can't grip. And I'm-not very good at heights. I might fall. I don't want you below me. You-” He balked, then went on roughly, “You've been decent to me, and I haven't had to put up with that for a long time.”

She winced at his tone. “Why are you angry? How have I offended you?”

By being nice to me! he rasped silently. His face was grey with fear as he turned, dropped to his hands and knees, and backed out through the gap.

In the first rush of trepidation, he lowered his feet to the stairs with his eyes closed. But he could not face the descent without his eyes; the leper's habit of watching himself, and the need to have all his senses alert, were too strong. Yet with his eyes open the height made his head reel. So he strove to keep his gaze on the rock in front of him. From the first step, he knew that his greatest danger lay in the numbness of his feet. Numb hands made him feel unsure of every grip, and before he had gone fifty feet he was clenching the edges so hard that his shoulders began to cramp. But he could see his hands, see that they were on the rock, that the aching in his wrists and elbows was not a lie. His feet he could not see-not unless he looked down. He could only tell that his foot was on a stair when his ankle felt the pressure of his weight. In each downward step he lowered himself onto a guess. If he felt an unexpected flex in his arch, he had to catch himself with his arms and get more of his foot onto the unseen stair. He tried kicking his feet forward so that the jar of contact would tell him when his toes were against the edge of the next stair; but when he misjudged, his shins or knees struck the stone corners, and that sharp pain nearly made his legs fold.

Climbing down stair by stair, staring at his hands with sweat streaming into his eyes, he cursed the fate which had cut away two of his fingers-two fingers less to save himself with if his feet failed. In addition, the absence of half his hand made him feel that his right hold was weaker than his left, that his weight was pulling leftward off the stair. He kept reaching his feet to the right to compensate, and kept missing the stairs on that side.

He could not get the sweat out of his eyes. It stung him like blindness, but he feared to release one hand to wipe his forehead, feared even to shake his head because he might lose his balance. Cramps tormented his back and shoulders. He had to grit his teeth to keep from crying for help.

As if she sensed his distress, Lena shouted, “Halfway!”

He crept on downward, step by step.

Helplessly, he felt himself moving faster. His muscles were failing-the strain on his knees and elbows was too great and with each step he had less control over his descent. He forced himself to stop and rest, though his terror screamed for him to go on, get the climb over with. For a wild instant, he thought that he would simply turn and leap, hoping he was close enough to land on the mountain slope and live. Then he heard the sound of Lena's feet approaching his head. He wanted to reach up and grab her ankles, force her to save him. But even that hope seemed futile, and he hung where he was, quivering.

His breath rattled harshly through his clenched teeth, and he almost did not understand Lena's shout:

“Thomas Covenant! Be strong! Only fifty steps remain!”

With a shudder that almost tore him loose from the rock, he started down again.

The last steps passed in a loud chaos of cramps and sweat blindness-and then he was down, lying flat on the level base of the Watch and gasping at the cries of his limbs. For a long time, he covered his face and listened to the air lurching in and out of his lungs like sobs-listened until the sound relaxed and he could breathe more quietly.

When he finally looked up, he saw the blue sky, the long black finger of Kevin's Watch pointing at the noon sun, the towering slope of the mountain, and Lena bending over him so low that her hair almost brushed his face.

COVENANT felt strangely purged, as if he had passed through an ordeal, survived a ritual trial by vertigo. He had put the stair behind him. In his relief, he was sure that he had found the right answer to the particular threat of madness, the need for a real and comprehensible explanation to his situation, which had surrounded him on Kevin's Watch. He looked up at the radiant sky, and it appeared pure, untainted by carrion eaters.