thunder pounded like a crushing of boulders. Then, out of the bawling sky, rain struck like a paroxysm of rage-hit with savage force until it stung. The horses lowered their heads as if they were wincing. Torrents battered the riders, drenched, blinded them. Manethrall Lithe sent her Cords scouting ahead to keep the company from plunging over Landsdrop. Prothall raised his staff with bright fire flaring at its tip to help keep his companions from losing each other. They huddled together, and the Bloodguard positioned the Ranyhyn around them to bear the brunt of the attack.
In the white revelations of the lightning, Prothall's flare appeared dim and frail, and thunder detonated hugely over it as if exploding at the touch of folly. Covenant crouched low on Dura's back, flinched away from the lightning as if the sky were stone which the thunder shattered. He could not see the Cords, did not know what was happening around him; he was constantly afraid that Dura's next step would take him over the cliff. He clenched his eyes to Prothall's flame as if it could keep him from being lost.
The skill and simple toughness of the Ramen preserved the company, kept it moving toward Mount Thunder. But the journey seemed like wandering in the collapse of the heavens. The riders could only be sure of their direction because they were always forcing their way into the maw of the storm. The wind flailed the rain at their faces until their eyes felt lacerated and their cheeks shredded. And the cold drenching stiffened their limbs, paralyzed them slowly like the rigor of death. But they went on as if they were trying to beat down a wall of stone with their foreheads.
For two full days, they pushed onward-felt themselves crumbling under the onslaught of the rain. But they knew neither day nor night, knew nothing but one continuous, pummelling, dark, savage, implacable storm. They rode until they were exhausted-rested on their feet knee-deep in water and mud, gripping the reins of their horses- ate sopping morsels of food half warmed by
Covenant was too worn and cold to respond. But he heard the generous courage behind Mhoram's words. When the company started forward again, he squinted ahead toward Prothall's flame as if he were peering into a mystery.
The struggle went on, prolonged itself far beyond the point where it felt unendurable. In time, endurance itself became abstract-a mere concept, too impalpable to carry conviction. The lash and riot of the storm reduced the riders to raw, quivering flesh hardly able to cling to their mounts. But Prothall's fire burned on. At each new flash and blast, Covenant reeled in his seat. He wanted nothing in life but a chance to lie down in the mud. But Prothall's fire burned on. It was like a manacle, emprisoning the riders, dragging them forward. In the imminent madness of the torrents, Covenant gritted his gaze as if that manacle were precious to him.
Then they passed the boundary. It was as abrupt as if the wall against which they had thrown themselves like usurped titans had suddenly fallen into mud. Within ten stumbling heartbeats, the end of the storm blew over them, and they stood gasping in a sun-bright noon. They could hear the tumult rushing blindly away. Around them were the remains of the deluge-broken pools and streams and fens, thick mud like wreckage on the battle plain. And before them stood the great ravaged head of Mount Thunder: Gravin Threndor, Peak of the Fire-Lions.
For a long moment, it held them like an aegis of silence-grim, grave and august, like an outcropping of the Earth's heart. The Peak was north and slightly west of them. Taller than Kevin's Watch above the Upper Land, it seemed to kneel on the edge of the Sarangrave, with its elbows braced on the plateau and its head high over the cliff, fronting the sky in a strange attitude of pride and prayer; and it rose twelve thousand feet over the Defiles Course, which flowed eastward from its feet. Its sides from its crumpled foothills to the raw rock of its crown were bare, not cloaked or defended from storms, snows, besieging time by any trees or grasses, but instead wearing sheer, fragmented cliffs like facets, some as black as obsidian and others as grey as the ash of a granite fire-as if the stone of the Mount were too thick, too charged with power, to bear any gentle kind of life.
There, deep in the hulky chest of the mountain, was the destination of the Quest: Kiril Threndor, Heart of Thunder.
They were still ten leagues from the Peak, but the distance was deceptive. Already that scarred visage dominated the northern horizon; it confronted them over the rift of Landsdrop like an irrefusable demand. Mount Thunder! There Berek Halfhand had found his great revelation. There the Quest for the Staff of Law hoped to regain the future of the Land. And there Thomas Covenant sought release from the impossibility of his dreams. The company stared at the upraised rock as if it searched their hearts, asked them questions which they could not answer.
Then Quaan grinned fiercely, and said, “At least now we have been washed clean enough for such work.”
That incongruity cracked the trance which held the riders. Several of the warriors burst into laughter as if recoiling from the strain of the past two days, and most of the others chuckled, daring Drool or any enemy to believe that the storm had weakened them. Though nearly prostrated by the exertion of finding a path through the torrents on foot, the Ramen laughed as well, sharing a humour they did not fully understand.
Only Foamfollower did not respond. His eyes were fixed on Mount Thunder, and his brows overhung his gaze as if shielding it from something too bright or hot to be beheld directly.
The Questers found a relatively dry hillock on which to rest and eat, and feed their mounts; and Foamfollower went with them absently. While the company made itself as comfortable as possible for a time, he stood apart and gazed at the mountain as if he were reading secrets in its scored crevices and cliffs. Softly he sang to himself:
Now we are Unhomed,
bereft of root and kith and kin.
From other mysteries of delight,
we set our sails to resail our track;
but the winds of life blew not the way we chose,
and the land beyond the Sea was lost.
High Lord Prothall let the company rest for as long as he dared in the open plain. Then he moved on again for the remainder of the afternoon, clinging to the edge of Landsdrop as if it were his only hope. Before the storm, Covenant had learned that the sole known entrance to the catacombs of Mount Thunder was through the western chasm of the Soulsease-Treacher's Gorge, the rocky maw which swallowed the river, only to spit it out again eastward on the Lower Land, transmogrified by hidden turbulent depths into the Defiles Course, a stream grey with the sludge and waste of the Wightwarrens. So Prothall's hope lay in his southeastern approach. He believed that by reaching Mount Thunder on the south and moving toward Treacher's Gorge from the east, the company could arrive unseen and unexpected at the Gorge's western exposure. But he took no unnecessary risks. Gravin Threndor stood perilously large against the sky, and seemed already to lean looming toward the company as if the Peak itself were bent to the shape of Drool's malice. He urged the tired Ramen to their best cunning in choosing a way along Landsdrop; and he kept the riders moving until after the sun had set.
But all the time he rode slumped agedly in his saddle, with his head bowed as if he were readying his neck for the stroke of an axe. He seemed to have spent all his strength in pulling his companions through the storm. Whenever he spoke, his long years rattled in his throat.
The next morning, the sun came up like a wound into ashen skies. Grey clouds overhung the earth, and a shuddering wind fell like a groan from the slopes of Mount Thunder. Across the wasteland, the pools of rainwater began to stagnate, as if the ground refused to drink the moisture, leaving it to rot instead. And as they prepared to ride, the Questers heard a low rumble like the march of drums-deep in the rock. They could feel the throb in their feet, in their knee joints.
It was the beat of mustering war.
The High Lord answered as if it were a challenge. “
Warhaft Quaan responded with a cheer, “Hail, High Lord Prothall! We are proud to follow!”
Prothall's shoulders squared. His horse lifted its ears, raised its head, took a few prancing steps as grandly as a Ranyhyn. The Ranyhyn nickered humorously at the sight, and the company rode after Prothall boldly, as if the
