Eventually, they reached a landing in the wall of an empty pit. There he found another hidden door. Foamfollower opened it as he had the first one, and ducked through it into a high round hall. After Covenant had stumbled across the sill, Foamfollower closed the door and moved warily out into the centre of the hall.
Like the other halls the Giant had seen, this one was featureless except for its entrances. He counted eight large doorways, each perfectly spaced around the wall, perfectly identical to the others, each sealed shut with heavy stone doors. He could sense no life anywhere near him, no activity beyond any of the doors. But all his nerves shrilled in the direction of the Stone.
“There,” Foamfollower breathed softly, pointing at one of the entrances. “There is the thronehall of Ridjeck Thome. There Soulcrusher holds the Illearth Stone.”
Without looking at his friend, he went over to the door, placed his hands on it to verify his perception. “Yes,” he whispered. “It is here.” Dread and exultation wrestled together in him. Moments passed before he realized that Covenant had not answered him.
He pressed against the door to measure its strength. “Covenant,” he said over his shoulder, “my friend, the end is near. Cling to your courage for one moment longer. I will break open this door. When I do, you must run at once into the thronehall. Go to the Stone-before any power intervenes.” Still Covenant did not reply. “Unbeliever! We are at the end. Do not falter now.”
In a ghastly voice, Covenant said, “You don’t need to break it down.”
Foamfollower whirled, springing away from the door.
The Unbeliever stood in the centre of the hall. He was not alone.
An ur-vile loremaster stood before him, slavering from its gaping nostrils. In its hands, it held chains, shackles.
As Foamfollower watched in horror, it locked the shackles onto Covenant’s wrists. Leading him by the chain, it took him to the door of the thronehall.
The Giant started toward his friend. But Covenant’s terrible gaze stopped him. In the dark, starved bruises of Covenant’s eyes, he read something that he could not answer. The Unbeliever was trying to tell him something, something for which he did not have words. Foamfollower had studied the injury which other ur-viles had done to Covenant, but he could not fathom the depth of a misery which could make a man surrender to Demondim- spawn.
“Covenant!” he cried in protest.
Deliberately, Covenant’s gaze flicked away from the Giant-bored intensely into him and then jumped away, pulling Foamfollower’s eyes with it.
The Giant turned in spite of himself, and saw another Giant standing across the hall from him. The newcomer’s fists were clenched on his hips, and he was grinning savagely. Foamfollower recognized him at once; he was one of the three brothers who had fallen victim to the Ravers. Like Elena, this tormented soul had been resurrected to serve Soulcrusher.
Before Foamfollower could react, the door to the thronehall opened, then closed behind Covenant.
At the same time, all the other doors leaped open, pouring Stone-made monsters into the hall.
Twenty: The Unbeliever
FOAMFOLLOWER wheeled around, saw that he had been surrounded. Scores of creatures had entered the hall; they were more than enough to deluge him, bury him under their weight if they did not choose to slay him with their weapons. But they did not attack. They spread out along the wall, bunched in tight formations before the doors, so that he could not escape. There they stopped. With the doors closed behind them, they stood leaning eagerly forward as if they yearned to hack him to pieces. But they left him to the dead Giant.
Foamfollower swung back to face the specter.
It advanced slowly, jeering at him with its malevolent grin. “Greetings, Foamfollower,” it spat. “Kinabandoner. Comrade! I have come to congratulate you. You serve the master well. Not content merely to desert our people in their time of doom, so that our entire race was extirpated from the Land, you have now delivered this groveller and his effectless white gold into the hands of the Despiser, Satansheart and Soulcrusher. Oh, well done! I give you greeting and praise, comrade!” It ejaculated the word
Foamfollower retreated a few steps, but his eyes did not for an instant quail from the dead Giant.
“Retribution!” Kinslaughterer sneered. “I see it in your face. You do not think of despair-you are too blind to perceive what you have done. By the master! You do not even think of your despicable friend. You have retribution in your heart, comrade! You behold me, and believe that if all else in your life fails, you have now at least been made able to exact vengeance for your loss. For your crime! Kinabandoner, I see it in you. It is the dearest desire of your heart to rend me limb from limb with your own hands. Fool! Do I have the appearance of one who fears you?”
While he held the specter’s gaze, Foamfollower gauged his position measured distances around him. Kinslaughterer’s words affected him. In them, he saw the sweetness of retribution. He knew the fury of killing, the miserable, involuntary delight of crushing flesh with his hands. He quivered as if he were eager, poised the gnarled might of his muscles for a leap.
“Attempt me, then,” the dead Giant went on. “Unleash the lust which fills you. Do you believe you can vindicate yourself against me? Are you so blind? Comrade! There is nothing that justifies you. If you shed blood enough to wash the Land from east to west, you cannot wash out the ill of yourself. Imbecile! Anile fool! If the master did not control you, you would do his work for him so swiftly that he would be unable to take pleasure in it. Come then, comrade! Attempt me. I am slain already. How will you bring me to death again?”
”I will attempt it,” Foamfollower grated softly, “in my own way.” The specter’s unnecessary goading told him what he needed to know. The creatures could have slain him at any time-yet they waited while Kinslaughterer strove to provoke him. Therefore Soulcrusher still had something to gain from him; therefore Covenant was still alive, still unbeaten. Perhaps Lord Foul hoped to use Foamfollower himself against the Unbeliever.
But Foamfollower had survived the
They ducked under the suddenness of his assault. He dove headlong over them, forearms braced, so that his entire force struck the doors.
They had not been made to withstand such an impact. With a sharp cry of splintering stone, they burst inward.
Foamfollower fell in a flurry of door shards, somersaulted, snapped to his feet in the thronehall of Ridjeck Thome.
The room was a wide round hall like the one he had just left, but it had fewer doors, and its ceiling was far higher, as if to accommodate the immense powers which occupied it. Opposite Foamfollower was the great throne itself. On a low mound against the far wall, old grisly rock had been upreared to form the Despiser’s seat in the shape of jaws, raw hooked teeth bared to grip and tear. It and its base were the only things he had seen in Foul’s Creche which were not perfectly carved, utterly polished. It appeared to have been irremediably crippled, grotesqued, by the age-long weight of Lord Foul’s malice. It looked like a prophecy or foretaste of ultimate doom for all Ridjeck Thome’s immaculate rock.
Set into the floor directly before it was the Illearth Stone.
The Stone was not as large as Foamfollower had expected it to be; it did not appear so big or heavy that he could not have lifted it in his arms. Yet its radiance staggered him like the blow of a prodigious fist. It was not extremely bright-its illumination in the thronehall was only a little stronger than the light elsewhere-but it blazed in its setting like an incarnation of absolute cold. It pulsed like a mad heart, sent out unfetterable gouts and flares of force, radiated violently its power for corruption. Foamfollower slammed into the glare and Stopped as if he could already feel the gelid emerald turning his skin to ice.
He stared at the Stone for a moment, horrified by its strength. But then his staggered senses became aware
