Lord Foul's Bane

the slain Waynhim- “or murder.”

Slowly, Atiaran knelt beside the spot he indicated. For a moment, she studied it, then touched it with her hands. When she stood up, she said, “I feel nothing-”

“It's gone,” he interrupted.

“- but I have not the touch of a rhadhamaerl,” she went on. “Have you felt this before?”

“Once. Earlier.”

“Ah,” she sighed, “would that I were a Lord, and knew what to do. There must be an evil working deep in the Earth-a great evil, indeed, if the Andelainian Hills are not altogether safe. But the ill is new yet, or timid. It does not remain. We must hope to outrun it. Ah, weak! Our speed becomes less sufficient with each passing day.”

She pulled her robe tightly about her, strode away into the evening. She and Covenant travelled on without a halt until night was thick around them, and the waning moon was high in its path among the stars.

The next day, Covenant felt convulsions of ill through the grass more often. Twice during the morning, and four times during the afternoon and evening, one foot or the other recoiled with sudden ferocity from the turf, and by the time Atiaran stopped for the night, his nerves from his legs to the roots of his teeth were raw and jangling. He felt intensely that such sore spots were an affront to, even a betrayal of, Andelain, where every other touch and line and hue of sky and tree and grass and hill was redolent with richness. Those attacks, pangs, stings made him involuntarily wary of the ground itself, as if the very foundation of the Earth had been cast into doubt.

On the fifth day since Soaring Woodhelven, he felt the wrongness in the grass less often, but the attacks showed an increase in virulence. Shortly after noon, he found a spot of ill that did not vanish after he first touched it. When he set his foot on it again, he felt a quiver as if he had stepped on an ache in the ground. The vibration rapidly numbed his foot, and his jaws hurt from clenching his teeth, but he did not back away. Calling to Atiaran, he knelt on the grass and touched the earth's sore with his hands.

To his surprise, he felt nothing.

Atiaran explored the ground herself, then considered him with a frown in her eyes. She also felt nothing.

But when he probed the spot with his foot, he found that the pain was still there. It scraped his brain, made sweat bead on his forehead, drew a snarl from his throat. As the ache spread through his bones, sending cold numbness up his leg, he bent to slide his fingers under the sole of his boot. But his hands still felt nothing; only his feet were sensitive to the peril.

On an impulse, he threw off one boot, removed his sock, and placed his bare foot on the spot of ill. This time, the discrepancy was even more surprising. He could feel the pain with his booted foot, but not with his bare one. And yet his sensations were perfectly clear; the wrong arose from the ground, not from his boot.

Before he could stop himself, he snatched off his other boot and sock, and cast them away from him. Then he dropped heavily to sit on the grass, and clutched his throbbing head in both hands.

“I have no sandals for you,” Atiaran said stiffly. “You will need footwear before this journey has reached its end.”

Covenant hardly heard her. He felt acutely that he had recognized a danger, identified a threat which had been warping him for days without his knowledge.

Is that how you're going to do it, Foul? he snarled. First my nerves come back to life. Then Andelain makes me forget, Then I throw away my boots. Is that it? Break down all my defences one at a time so that I won't be able to protect myself? Is that how you're going to destroy me?

“We must go on,” Atiaran said. “Decide what you will do.”

Decide? Bloody hell! Covenant jerked himself to his feet. Fuming, he grated through his teeth, “It's not that easy.” Then he stalked over to retrieve his boots and socks.

Survive.

He laced his feet into his boots as if they were a kind of armour.

For the rest of the day, he shied away from every hint of pain in the ground, and followed Atiaran grimly, with a clenched look in his eyes, striving against the stinging wrong to preserve his sovereignty, his sense of himself. And toward evening his struggle seemed to find success. After a particularly vicious attack late in the afternoon, the ill pangs stopped. He did not know whether or not they would return, but for a while at least he was free of them.

That night was dark with clouds, and Atiaran was forced to make camp earlier than usual. Yet she and Covenant got little rest. A light, steady rain soaked their blankets, and kept them awake most of the night, huddling for shelter under the deeper shadow of an enshrouding willow.

But the next morning-the sixth of their journey from Soaring Woodhelven-dawned bright and full of Andelainian cheer. Atiaran met it with haste and anticipation in her every move; and the way she urged Covenant along seemed to express more friendliness, more companionship, than anything she had done since the beginning of their sojourn. Her desire for speed was infectious; Covenant was glad to share it because it rescued him from thinking about the possibility of further attacks of wrong. They began the day's travel at a lope.

The day was made for travelling. The air was cool, the sun clean and encouraging; the path led straight and level; springy grass carried Atiaran and Covenant forward at every stride. And her contagious eagerness kept him trotting behind her league after league. Toward midday, she slowed her pace to eat treasure-berries along the way; but even then she made good speed, and as evening neared she pushed their pace into a lope again.

Then the untracked path which the Woodhelvennin had taught her brought them to the end of a broad valley. After a brief halt while she verified her bearings, she started straight up a long, slow hillside that seemed to carry on away eastward for a great distance. She chose a plumb-line direction which took her directly between two matched Gilden trees a hundred yards above the valley, and Covenant followed her toiling lope up the hill without question. He was too tired and out of breath to ask questions.

So they ascended that hillside-Atiaran trotting upward with her head held high and her hair fluttering, as if she saw fixed before her the starry gates of heaven, and Covenant plodding, pumping behind her. At their backs, the sun sank in a deep exhalation like the release of a long pent-up sigh. And ahead of them the slope seemed to stretch on into the sky.

Covenant was dumbfounded when Atiaran reached the crest of the hill, stopped abruptly, grabbed his shoulders, and spun him around in a circle, crying joyfully, “We are here! We are in time!”

He lost his balance and fell to the turf. For a moment he lay panting, with hardly enough energy to stare at her. But she was not aware of him. Her eyes were fixed down the eastern slope of the hill as she called in a voice short-breathed by fatigue and exultation and reverence, “Banas Nimoram! Ah, glad heart! Glad heart of Andelain. I have lived to this time.”

Caught by the witchery of her voice, Covenant levered himself to his feet and followed her gaze as if he expected to behold the soul of Andelain incarnate.

He could not refrain from groaning in the first sag of his disappointment. He could see nothing to account for Atiaran's rapture, nothing that was more healthy or precious than the myriad vistas of Andelain past which she had rushed unheeding. Below him, the grass dipped into a smooth wide bowl set into the hills like a drinking cup for the night sky. With the sun gone, the outlines of the bowl were not clear, but starlight was enough to show that there were no trees, no bushes, no interruptions to the smoothness of the bowl. It looked as regular as if the surface of the grass had been sanded and burnished. On this night, the stars seemed especially gay, as if the darkness of the moon challenged them to new brightness. But Covenant felt that such things were not enough to reward his bone- deep fatigue.

However, Atiaran did not ignore his groan. Taking his arm, she said, “Do not judge me yet,” and drew him forward. Under the branches of the last tree on the bowl's lip, she dropped her pack and sat against the trunk, facing down the hill. When Covenant had joined her, she said softly, “Control your mad heart, Unbeliever. We are here in time. This is Banas Nimoram, the dark of the moon on the middle night of spring. Not in my generation has there been such a night, such a time of rareness and beauty. Do not measure the Land by the standard of yourself. Wait. This is Banas Nimoram, the Celebration of Spring-finest rite of all the treasures of the Earth. If you do not disturb the air with anger, we will see the Dance of the Wraiths of Andelain.” As she spoke, her voice echoed with rich harmonics as if she were singing; and Covenant felt the force of what she promised, though he did not understand. It was not a time for questions, and he set himself to wait for the visitation.

Waiting was not difficult. First Atiaran passed bread and the last of her springwine to him, and eating and