Lord Foul's Bane

flailed the Hills; thunder groaned in long suppressed pain. When the travellers awoke, the sun stood over them, and their clothes were drenched with the night's rain. But sunshine and morning could not unscar their wounded memories. They clambered like corpses to their feet-ate aliantha, drank from a stream- set off again walking as if they were stiff with death.

Yet time and aliantha and Andelainian air slowly worked their resuscitations. Slowly, Covenant's weary thoughts shifted; the trudging horror of slaughter receded, allowed a more familiar pain to ache in him. He could hear Atiaran crying, Covenant, help them! and the sound made his blood ran cold with impotence.

The Wraiths, the Wraiths! he moaned dimly, distantly, to himself. They had been so beautiful-and he had been so unable to save them.

Yet Atiaran had believed him capable of saving them; she had expected some putting forth of power-Like Lena and Baradakas and everyone else he met, she saw him as Berek Halfhand reborn, the master of wild magic. You have might, the Despiser had said. You will never know what it is. He did not know; how could he? What did magic, or even dreams, have to do with him?

And yet the Wraiths had paid homage to his ring as if they recognized his lost humanity. They had been changed by it.

After a time, he said without meaning to speak aloud, “I would have saved them if I could.”

“You have the power.” Atiaran's voice was dull, inert, as if she were no longer capable of grief or anger.

“What power?” he asked painfully.

“Do you wear the white gold for nothing?”

“It's just a ring. I wear it-I wear it because I'm a leper. I don't know anything about power.”

She did not look at him. “I cannot see. You are closed to me.”

At that, he wanted to protest, cry out, grab her by the shoulders and shout into her face, Closed? Look-look at me! I'm no Berek! No hero. I'm too sick for that. But he lacked the strength. And he had been too badly hurt-hurt as much by Atiaran's impossible demand as by his powerlessness.

How-?

The Wraiths!

How can this happen to me?

A moment passed while he groaned over the question. Then he sighed to himself, I should have known-He should have heard his danger in Atiaran's singing of the Berek legend, seen it in Andelain, felt it in the revulsion in his boots. But he had been deaf, blind, numb. He had been so busy moving ahead, putting madness behind him, that he had ignored the madness toward which the path of his dream tended. This dream wanted him to be a hero, a saviour; therefore it seduced him, swept him along-urging him forward so that he would run heedless of himself to risk his life for the sake of Wraiths, the Land, illusion. The only difference in this between Atiaran and Lord Foul was that the Despiser wanted him to fail.

You will never know what it is. Of course he would never know. A visceral anger writhed under his fatigue. He was dreaming-that was the answer to everything, to the Land's impossible expectations of him as well as to the Land's impossibility. He knew the difference between reality and dream; he was sane.

He was a leper.

And yet the Wraiths had been so beautiful. They had been slaughtered

I'm a leper!

Trembling, he began to give himself a VSE. Hellfire! What do Wraiths and wild magic and Berek bloody Halfhand have to do with me? His body appeared whole-he could see no injuries, his clothing was rumpled but unrent-but the end of the Hirebrand's staff had been blackened by the power of the ur-viles. By hell! They can't do this to me.

Fuming against his weariness, he shambled along at Atiaran's side. She did not look at him, did not seem to recognize his presence at all; and during that day he left her alone as if he feared how he would respond if he gave her an opportunity to accuse him. But when they halted that evening, the cold night and the brittle stars made him regret the loss of their blankets and graveling. To distract himself from his hollow discomfort, he resumed his half- forgotten efforts to learn about the Land. Stiffly, he said, “Tell me about that-whoever saved us. Back there.”

A long silence passed before she said, “Tomorrow.” Her voice was lightless, unillumined by anything expect torpor or defeat. “Let me be. Until tomorrow.”

Covenant nodded in the darkness. It felt thick with cold and beating wings, but he could answer it better than he could reply to Atiaran's tone. For a long time he shivered as if he were prepared to resent every dream that afflicted a miserable mankind, and at last he fell into fitful slumber.

The next day, the ninth from Soaring Woodhelven, Atiaran told Covenant about the Unfettered One in a voice as flat as crushed rock, as if she had reached the point where what she said, how she exposed herself, no longer mattered to her. “There are those from the Loresraat,” she said, 'who find that they cannot work for the Land or the Lore of the Old Lords in the company of their fellows-Lords or Lorewardens, the followers of Sword or Staff. Those have some private vision which compels them to seek it in isolation. But their need for aloneness does not divide them from the people. They are given the Rites of Unfettering, and freed from all common demands, to quest after their own lore with the blessing of the Lords and the respect of all who love the Land. For the Lords learned long ago that the desire for aloneness need not be a selfish desire, if it is not made so by those who do not feel it.

'Many of the Unfettered have never returned into knowledge. But stories have grown up around those Ones who have not vanished utterly. Some are said to know the secrets of dreams, others to practice deep mysteries in the arts of healing, still others to be the friends of the animals, speaking their language and calling on their help in times of great need.

“Such a One saved us”- her voice thickened momentarily- “a learner of the Wraiths and a friend to the small beasts of the woods. He knew more of the Seven Words than my ears have ever heard.” She groaned softly. “A mighty man, to have been so slain. He released the Wraiths, and saved our lives. Would that I were worth so much. By the Seven! No evil has ever before been aimed at the Wraiths of Andelain. The Grey Slayer himself never dared- And it is said that the Ritual of Desecration itself had no power to touch them. Now it is in my heart that they will not dance again.”

After a heavy pause, she went on: “No matter. All things end, in perversion and death. Sorrow belongs to those who also hope. But that Unfettered One gave his life so that you and your message and your ring might reach the Lords. This we will accomplish, so that such sacrifices may have meaning.”

She fell silent again for a moment, and Covenant asked himself, Is that why? Is that what living is for? To vindicate the deaths of others? But he said nothing, and shortly Atiaran's thoughts limped back to her subject. “But the Unfettered. Some are dreamers, some healers, some share the life of the animals. Some delve the earth to uncover the secrets of the Cavewights, others learn the lore of the Demondim whatever knowledge guides the One's private prophecy. I have even heard it whispered that some Unfettered follow the legend of Caerroil Wildwood of Garroting Deep, and become Forestals. But that is a perilous thought, even when whispered.

“Never before have I seen one of the Unfettered. But I have heard the Rites of Unfettering. A hymn is sung.” Dully, she recited:

Free

Unfettered

Shriven

Free—

Dream that what is dreamed will be:

Hold eyes clasped shut until they see,

And sing the silent prophecy

And be

Unfettered

Shriven

Free.

There is more, but my weakness will not recall-It may be that I will not sing any song again.' She pulled her robe tight around her shoulders as if a wind were chilling through her, and said nothing more for the rest of the