Lord Foul's Bane

dead and sprint after the survivors.

They vanished into shadows at the foot of the hill. From the darkness came sounds of fighting-enraged snarls, the snap of jaws that missed their mark, bones cracking.

Then silence flooded back into the night. The apprehension of the company sharpened, for they could see nothing; the shadow reached almost to the crest of the hill where they stood.

Abruptly, they heard the sound of frantic running. It came directly toward them.

Prothall sprang forward. He raised his staff, and blue fire flared from its tip. The sudden light revealed a lone kresh with hatred in its eyes pelting at him.

Tuvor reached Prothall's side an instant before Foamfollower. But the Giant went ahead to meet the wolf's charge.

Then, without warning, Cord Grace rose out of hiding squarely in front of the wolf. She executed her movement as smoothly as if she were dancing. As she stood, a swift jerk freed her rope. When the kresh sprang at her, she flipped a loop of the rope around its neck, and stepped neatly aside, turning as she did so to brace her feet. The force of the wolf's charge as it hit her noose broke its neck. The yank pulled her from her feet, but she rolled lightly to one side, keeping pressure on the rope, and came to her feet in a position to finish the kresh if it were still alive.

The Eoman met her performance with a low murmur of admiration. She glanced toward them and smiled diffidently in the blue light of Prothall's staff. Then she turned to greet the other Cords as they loped out of the shadow of the hill. They were uninjured. All the wolves were dead.

Lowering his staff, Prothall gave the Cords a Ramen bow. “Well done,” he said. They bowed in acknowledgment

When he extinguished his staff, red darkness returned to the hilltop. In the bloodlight, the riders began moving back to their horses. But Bannor stepped over to the dead wolf and pulled Grace's rope from around its neck. Holding the cord in a fighting grip, he stretched it taut.

“A good weapon,” he said with his awkward inflectionlessness. “The Ramen did mighty work with it in the days when High Lord Kevin fought Corruption openly.” Something in his tone reminded Covenant that the Bloodguard were lusty men who had gone unwived for more than two thousand years.

Then, on the spur of an obscure impulse, Bannor tightened his muscles, and the rope snapped. Shrugging slightly, he dropped the pieces on the dead kresh. His movement had the finality of a prophecy. Without a glance at Cord Grace, he left the hilltop to mount the Ranyhyn that had chosen him.

Nineteen: Ringthane's Choice

CORD Rustah informed Prothall that, according to Ramen custom, dead renders of the Ranyhyn were left for the vultures. The Ramen had no desire to honour kresh, or to affront the earth, by burying them, and pyres raised the danger of fire on the Plains. So the riders could rest as soon as their horses were away from the smell of death. The Cord led the company on southward for nearly a league until he was satisfied that no night breeze would carry unrest to the animals. Then the Quest camped.

Covenant slept fitfully, as if he lay with the point of a spike against his stomach; and when the dawn came, he felt as ineffectual as if he had spent the night trying to counterpunch hunger. And when his nose tasted again the tangy smell of the poison amanibhavam, the sensation made his eyes water as if he had been struck.

He did not believe that he could hold himself upright much longer. But he still did not have the answer he needed. He had found no new insight, and the green handiwork of Morinmoss on his robe seemed illegible. A sure instinct told him that he could find what he lacked in the extremity of hunger. When his companions had eaten, and were ready to travel again, he climbed dully onto Dura's back and rode with them. His eyes dripped senselessly from time to time, but he was not weeping. He felt charged with passion, but could not let it out. The grief of his leprosy did not permit any such release.

In contrast to the cold ash of his mood, the day was cheery, full of bright, unclouded sun and a warm northward breeze, of deep sky and swift hills. Soon the rest of the company had surrendered to the spell of the Plains-an incantation woven by the proud roaming of the Ranyhyn. Time and again, mighty horses cantered or raced by, glancing aside at the riders with laughter in their eyes and keen shimmering calls in their throats. The sight of them added a spring to the strides of the Cords, and as the morning passed, Grace and Thew sang together:

Run, Ranyhyn:

gallop, play—

feed, and drink, and coat-gloss gleam.

You are the marrow of the earth.

No rein will curb, or bit control—

no claw or fang unpunished rend;

no horse-blood drop without the healing grass.

We are the Ramen, born to serve:

Manethrall curry,

Cord protect,

Winhome hearth and bed anneal—

our feet do not bear our hearts away.

Grass-grown hooves, and forehead stars;

hocks and withers earth-wood bloom:

regal Ranyhyn, gallop, run—

we serve the Tail of the Sky,

Mane of the World.

Hearing the song, Ranyhyn pranced around the company and away, running as smoothly as if the ground flowed in their strides.

In Foamfollower's arms, Pietten stirred and shook off his day sleep for a while to watch the Ranyhyn with something like longing in his blank eyes. Prothall and Mhoram sat relaxed in their saddles, as if for the first time since leaving Revelstone they felt that the company was safe. And tears ran down Covenant's face as if it were a wall.

In his emptiness, the heat of the sun confused him. His head seemed to be fulminating, and the sensation made him feel that he was perched on an unsteady height, where great gulfs of vertiginous grass snapped like wolves at his heels. But the clingor of his saddle held him on Dura's back. After a time, he dozed into a dream where he danced and wept and made love at the commands of a satirical puppeteer.

When he awoke, it was mid afternoon, and there were mountains across most of the horizon ahead. The company was making good time. In fact, the horses were cantering now, as if the Plains gave them more energy than they could contain. For a moment, he looked ahead to Manhome, where, he foresaw, a misguided and valueless respect for his wedding ring would offer him to the Ranyhyn as a prospective rider. This was surely one of Prothall's reasons for choosing to visit the Plains of Ra before approaching Mount Thunder. Honour the ur-Lord, the Ringthane. Ah, hell! He tried to envision himself riding a Ranyhyn, but his imagination could not make the leap; more than anything else except Andelain, the great, dangerous, Earthpowerful horses quintessenced the Land. And Joan had been a breaker of horses. For some reason, the thought made his nose sting, and he tried to hold back his tears by gritting his teeth.

The rest of the afternoon he passed by watching the mountains. They grew ahead of the company as if the peaks were slowly clambering to their feet. Curving away southwest and northeast, the range was not as high as the mountains behind Mithil Stonedown, but it was rugged and raw, as if high pinnacles had been shattered to make those forbidding, impenetrable. Covenant did not know what lay behind the mountains, and did not want to know.