Lord Foul's Bane

and at once felt deeply refreshed.

Carefully, he closed the jug, replaced the food in the sack, then with an effort pushed the sack back into Foamfollower's reach. The diamondraught glowed in his belly, and he felt that in a little while he would be ready for another story. But as he lay down under the thwarts in the bow, the twilight turned into crystal darkness in the sky, and the stars came out lornly, like scattered children. Before he knew that he was drowsing, he was asleep.

It was an uneasy slumber. He staggered numbly through plague-ridden visions full of dying moons and slaughter and helpless ravaged flesh, and found himself lying in the street near the front bumper of the police car. A circle of townspeople had gathered around him. They had eyes of flint, and their mouths were stretched in one uniform rictus of denunciation. Without exception, they were pointing at his hands. When he lifted his hands to look at them, he saw that they were rife with purple, leprous bruises.

Then two white-clad, brawny men came up to him and manhandled him into a stretcher. He could see the ambulance nearby. But the men did not carry him to it immediately. They stood still, holding him at waist level like a display to the crowd.

A policeman stepped into the circle. His eyes were the colour of contempt. He bent over Covenant and said sternly, “You got in my way. That was wrong. You ought to be ashamed.” His breath covered Covenant with the smell of attar.

Behind the policeman, someone raised his voice. It was as full of unction as that of Joan's lawyer. It said, “That was wrong.”

In perfect unison, all the townspeople vomited gouts of blood onto the pavement.

I don't believe this, Covenant thought.

At once, the unctuous voice purred, “He doesn't believe us.” A silent howl of reality, a rabid assertion of fact, sprang up from the crowd. It battered Covenant until he cowered under it, abject and answerless.

Then the townspeople chorused, “You are dead. Without the community; you can't live. Life is in the community, and you have no community. You can't live if no one cares.” The unison of their voices made a sound like crumbling, crushing. When they stopped, Covenant felt that the air in his lungs had been turned to rubble.

With a sigh of satisfaction, the unctuous voice said, “Take him to the hospital. Heal him. There is only one good answer to death: Heal him and throw him out.”

The two men swung him into the ambulance. Before the door slammed shut, he saw the townspeople shaking hands with each other, beaming their congratulations. After that, the ambulance started to move. He raised his hands, and saw that the purple spots were spreading up his forearms. He stared at himself in horror, moaning, Hellfire hellfire hellfire!

But then a bubbling tenor voice said kindly, “Do not fear. It is a dream.” The reassurance spread over him like a blanket. But he could not feel it with his hands, and the ambulance kept on moving. Needing the blanket, he clenched at the empty air until his knuckles were white with loneliness.

When he felt that he could not ache anymore, the ambulance rolled over, and he fell out of the stretcher into blankness.

Twelve: Revelstone

THE pressure against his left cheek began slowly to wear his skin raw, and the pain nagged him up off the bottom of his slumber. Turbulence rushed under his head, as if he were pillowed on shoals. He laboured his way out of sleep. Then his cheek was jolted twice in rapid succession, and his resting place heaved. Pushing himself up, he smacked his head on a thwart of the boat. Pain throbbed in his skull. He gripped the thwart, swung himself away from the rib which had been rubbing his cheek, and sat up to look over the gunwales.

He found that the situation of the boat had changed radically. No shade or line or resonance of Andelainian richness remained in the surrounding terrain. On the northeast, the river was edged by a high, bluff rock wall. And to the west spread a grey and barren plain, a crippled wilderness like a vast battleground where more than men- had been slain, where the fire that scorched and the blood that drenched had blighted the ground's ability to revitalize itself, bloom again-an uneven despoiled lowland marked only by the scrub trees clinging to life along the river which poured into the Soulsease a few hundred yards ahead of the boat. The eastering wind carried an old burnt odour, and behind it lay the fetid memory of a crime.

Already, the river joining ahead troubled the Soulsease-knotted its current, stained its clarity with flinty mud-and Covenant had to grip the gunwales to keep his balance as the pitching of the boat increased.

Foamfollower held the boat in the centre of the river, away from the turmoil against the northeast rock wall. Covenant glanced back at the Giant. He was standing in the stern-feet widely braced, tiller clamped under his right arm. At Covenant's glance, he called over the mounting clash of the rivers, “Trothgard lies ahead! Here we turn north-the White River! The Grey comes from the west!” His voice had a strident edge to it, as if he had been singing as strongly as he could all night; but after a moment he sang out a fragment of a different song:

For we will not rest—

not turn aside,

lost faith,

or fail—

until the Grey flows Blue,

and Rill and Maerl are as new and clean

as ancient Llurallin.

The heaving of the river mounted steadily. Covenant stood in the bottom of the boat-bracing himself against one of the thwarts, gripping the gunwale-and watched the forced commingling of the clean and tainted waters. Then Foamfollower shouted, “One hundred leagues to the Westron Mountains Guards Gap and the high spring of the Llurallin and one hundred fifty southwest to the Last Hills and Garroting Deep! We are seventy from Lord's Keep!”

Abruptly, the river's moiling growl sprang louder, smothered the Giant's voice. An unexpected lash of the current caught the boat and tore its prow to the right, bringing it broadside to the stream. Spray slapped Covenant as the boat heeled over; instinctively, he threw his weight onto the left gunwale.

The neat instant, he heard a snatch of Foamfollower's plainsong, and felt power thrumming deeply along the keel. Slowly, the boat righted itself, swung into the current again.

But the near-disaster had carried them dangerously close to the northeast wall. The boat trembled with energy as Foamfollower worked it gradually back into the steadier water flowing below the main force of the Grey's current. Then the sensation of power faded from the keel.

“Your pardon!” the Giant shouted. “I am losing my seamanship!” His voice was raw with strain.

Covenant's knuckles were white from clenching the gunwales. As he bounced with the pitch of the boat, he remembered, There is only one good answer to death.

One good answer, he thought. This isn't it.

Perhaps it would be better if the boat capsized, tatter if he drowned-better if he did not carry Lord Foul's message halfhanded and beringed to Revelstone. He was not a hero. He could not satisfy such expectations.

“Now the crossing!” Foamfollower called. “We must pass the Grey to go on north. There is no great danger- except that I am weary. And the rivers are high.”

This time, Covenant turned and looked closely at the Giant. He saw now that Saltheart Foamfollower was suffering. His cheeks were sunken, hollowed as if something had gouged the geniality out of his face; and his cavernous eyes burned with taut, febrile volition. Weary? Covenant thought. More like exhausted. He lurched awkwardly from thwart to thwart until he reached the Giant. His eyes were no higher than Foamfollower's waist. He tipped his head back to shout, “I'll steer! You rest!”

A smile flickered on the Giant's lips. “I thank you. But no-you are not ready. I am strong enough. But please lift the diamondraught to me.”