hotter, deader. In spite of occasional ascents, their main progress was downward, toward the bottomless roots of the mountain, closer with every unseen, unmeasured league toward immense, buried, slumbering, grim ills, the terrible bones of the Earth. On and on they walked as if they were amazed by darkness, irremediable night. They made their way in hard silence, as if their lips were stiff with resisted sobs. They could not see. It affected them like a bereavement.
As they approached the working heart of the Wightwarrens, certain sounds became louder, more distinct-the battering of anvils, the groaning of furnaces, gasps of anguish. From time to time they crossed blasts of hot fetid air like forced ventilation for charnel pits. And a new noise crept into their awareness-a sound of bottomless boiling. For a long while, they drew nearer to this deep moil without gaining any hint of what it was.
Later they passed its source. Their path lay along the lip of a huge cavern. The walls were lit luridly by a seething orange sea of rocklight. Far below them was a lake of molten stone.
After the long darkness of their trek, the bright light hurt their eyes. The rising acrid heat of the lake snatched at them as if it were trying to pluck them from their perch. The deep, boiling sound thrummed in the air. Great gouts of magma spouted toward the ceiling, then fell back into the lake like crumbling towers.
Vaguely, Covenant heard someone say, “The Demondim in the days of High Lord Loric discarded their failed breeding efforts here. It is said that the loathing of the Demondim-and of the Viles who sired them-for their own forms surpassed all restraint. It led them to the spawning which made both ur-viles and Waynhim. And it drove them to cast all their weak and faulty into such pits as this-so strongly did they abhor their unseen eyelessness.”
Groaning, he turned his face to the wall, and crept past the cavern into the passage beyond it. When he dropped his hands from the support of the stone, his fingers twitched at his sides as if he were testing the sides of a casket.
Prothall chose to rest there, just beyond the cavern of rocklight. The company ate a quick, cold meal, then pressed on again into darkness. From this passage, they took two turns, went up a long slope, and at length found themselves walking a ledge in a fault. Its crevice fell away to their left. Covenant made his way absently, shaking his head in an effort to clear his thoughts. Ur-viles reeled across his brain like images of self-hatred, premonitions. Was he doomed to see himself even in such creatures as that? No. He gritted his teeth. No. In the light of remembered bursts of lava, he began to fear that he had already missed his chance-his chance to fall
In time, fatigue came back over him. Prothall called a rest halt on the ledge, and Covenant surprised himself nearly falling asleep that close to a crevice. But the High Lord was pushing toward his goal now, and did not let the company rest long. With his guttering torch, he led the Quest forward again, through darkness into darkness.
As the trek dragged on, their moment-by-moment caution began to slip. The full of the moon was coming, and somewhere ahead Drool was preparing for them. Prothall moved as if he were eager for the last test, and led them along the ledge at a stiff pace. As a result, the lone ur-vile took them all by surprise.
It had hidden itself in a thin fissure in the wall of the crevice. When Covenant passed it, it sprang out at him, threw its weight against his chest. Its roynish, eyeless face was blank with ferocity. As it struck him, it grappled for his left hand.
The force of the attack knocked him backward toward the crevice. For one flicker of time, he was not aware of that danger. The ur-vile consumed his attention. It pulled his hand close to its face, sniffed wetly over his fingers as if searching for something, then tried to jam his ring finger into its ragged mouth.
He staggered back one more step; his foot left the ledge. In that instant, he realized the hungry fall under him. Instinctively, he closed his fist against the ur-vile and ignored it. Clinging to his staff with all the strength of his halfhand, he thrust its end toward Bannor. The Bloodguard was already reaching for him.
Bannor caught hold of the staff.
For one slivered moment, Covenant kept his grip.
But the full weight of the ur-vile hung on his left arm. His hold tore loose from the staff. With the creature struggling to bite off his ring, he plunged into the crevice.
Before he could shriek his terror, a force like a boulder struck him, knocked the air from his lungs, left him gasping sickly as he plummeted. With his chest constricted and retching, unable to cry out, he lost consciousness.
When he roused himself after the impact, he was struggling for air against a faceful of dirt. He lay head down on a steep slope of shale and loam and refuse, and the slide caused by his landing had covered his face. For a long moment, he could not move except to gag and cough. His efforts shook him without freeing him.
Then, with a shuddering exertion, he rolled over, thrust up his head. He coughed up a gout of dirt, and found that he could breathe. But he still could not see. The fact took a moment to penetrate his awareness. He checked his face, found that his eyes were uncovered and open. But they perceived nothing except an utter and desolate darkness. It was as if he were blind with panic-as if his optic nerves were numb with terror.
For a time he did panic. Without sight, he felt the empty air suck at him as if he were drowning in quicksand. The night beat about him on naked wings like vultures dropping toward dead meat.
His heart beat out heavy jolts of fear. He cowered there on his knees, abandoned, bereft of eyes and light and mind by the extremity of his dread, and his breath whimpered in his throat. But as the first rush of his panic passed, he recognized it. Fear-it was an emotion he understood, a part of the condition of his existence. And his heart went on beating. Lurching as if wounded, it still kept up his life.
Suddenly, convulsively, he raised his fists and struck at the shale on either side of his head, pounded to the rhythm of his pulse as if he were trying to beat rationality out of the dirt. No! No! I am going to
The assertion steadied him. Survive! He was a leper, accustomed to fear. He knew how to deal with it. Discipline-discipline.
He pressed his hands over his eyeballs; spots of colour jerked across the black. He was not blind. He was seeing darkness. He had fallen away from the only light in the catacombs; of course he could not see.
Hell and blood.
Instinctively, he rubbed his hands, winced at the bruises he had given himself.
Discipline.
He was alone-alone- Lightless somewhere on the bottom of a ledge of the crevice long leagues from the nearest open sky. Without help, friends, rescue, for him the outside of the mountain was as unattainable as if it had ceased to exist. Escape itself was unattainable unless—
Discipline-unless he found some way to die.
Hellfire!
Thirst. Hunger. Injury-loss of blood. He iterated the possibilities as if he were going through a VSE. He might fall prey to some dark-bred bane. Might stumble over a more fatal precipice. Madness, yes. It would be as easy as leprosy.
Midnight wings beat about his ears, reeled vertiginously across the blind blackscape. His hands groped unconsciously around his head, seeking some way to defend himself.
Damnation!
None of this is happening to me.
Discipline!
A fetal fancy came over him. He caught hold of it as if it were a vision. Yes! Quickly, he changed his position so that he was sitting on the shale slope. He fumbled over his belt until he found Atiaran's knife. Poising it carefully in his half-fingerless grip, he began to shave.
Without water or a mirror, he was perilously close to slitting his throat, and the dryness of his beard caused him pain as if he were using the knife to dredge his face into a new shape. But this risk, this pain, was part of him; there was nothing impossible about, it. If he cut himself, the dirt on his skin would make infection almost instantaneous. It calmed him like a demonstration of his identity.
In that way, he made the darkness draw back, withhold its talons.
When he was done, he mustered his resolution for an exploration of his situation. He wanted to know what kind of place he was in. Carefully, tentatively, he began searching away from the slopes on his hands and knees.
Before he had moved three feet across flat stone, he found a body. The flesh yielded as if it had not been dead long, but its chest was cold and slick, and his hand came back wet, smelling of rotten blood
