The Power That Preserves

STILL sleep shrouded his sight; at first he saw nothing except the compact, baleful light of the trees. But his ring was in danger from her. He was jealous of his white gold. Sleep or no sleep, he did not mean to give it up. He strove to focus his eyes, strove to come far enough out of hiding to engage her attention.

Then a soft stroke of her hand swept the cobwebs from his eyebrows, and he found that he could see her.

“Lena?” he croaked again.

She was a dusky, loamy woman, with hair like tangled brown grass, and an old face uneven and crude of outline, as if it had been inexpertly moulded in clay. The hood of a tattered fallow-green cloak covered the crown of her head. And her eyes were the brown of soft mud, an unexpected and suggestive brown, as if the silt of some private devotion filled her orbs, effaced her pupils-as if the black, round nexus between her mind and the outside world were something that she had surrendered in exchange for the rare, rich loam of power. Yet there was no. confidence, no surety, in her gaze as she regarded him; the life which had formed her eyes was far behind her. Now she was old, timorous. Her voice rustled like the creaking of antique parchment as she asked, “Lena?”

“Are you still alive?”

“Am I-? No, I am not your Lena. She is dead-if the look of you tells any truth. Mercy.”

Mercy, he echoed soundlessly.

“This is the doing of the amanibhavam. Perhaps you have preserved your life in eating it-but surely you know that it is poison to you, a food too potent for human flesh.”

“Are you still alive?” he repeated with cunning in his throat. Thus he disguised himself, protected that part of him which had come out of hiding and sleep to ward his ring. Only the damaged state of his features kept him from grinning at his own slyness.

“Perhaps not,” she sighed. “But let that pass. You have no knowledge of what you say. You are cold-ill and poison-mad- and-and there is a sickness in you that I do not comprehend.”

“Why aren’t you dead?”

She brought her face close to his, and went on: “Listen to me. I know that the hand of confusion is upon you-but listen to me. Hear and hold my words. You have come in some way into Morinmoss Forest. I am-a Healer, an Unfettered One who turned to the work of healing. I will help you-because you are in need, and because the white gold reveals that great matters are afoot in the Land-and because the Forest found its voice to summon me for you, though that also I do not comprehend.”

“I saw him kill you.” The raw croak of Covenant’s voice sounded like horror and grief, but in his depths he hugged himself for glee at his cunning.

She drew back her head but showed no other reaction to what he had said. “I came to this place from-from my life-because the Forest’s unquiet slumber met my own long ache for repose. I am a Healer, and Morinmoss permits me. Yet now it speaks-Great matters, indeed. Ah, mercy. It is in my heart that the Colossus itself-Well, I wander. I have made my home here for many years. I am accustomed to speak only for my own pleasure.”

“I saw.”

“Do you not hear me?”

“He stabbed you with a wooden spike. I saw the blood.”

“Mercy! Is your life so violent then? Well, let that pass also. You do not hear me-you have fallen too far into the amanibhavam. But violent or not I must aid you. It is well that my eyes have not forgotten their work. I see that you are too weak to harm me, whatever your purpose.”

Weak, he echoed to himself. What she said was true; he was too frail even to clench his fist for the protection of his wedding band. “Have you come back to haunt me?” he gasped. “To blame me?”

” Speak if you must,” she said in a rustling tone, “but I cannot listen. I must be about my work.” With a low groan, she climbed to her feet and moved stiffly away from him.

“That’s it,” he continued, impelled by his grotesque inner glee. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve come back to torture me. You’re not satisfied that I killed him. I put that knife all the way into his heart but you’re not satisfied. You want to hurt me some more. You want me to go crazy thinking about all the things I’m guilty of. I did Foul’s work for him, and you came to torture me for it. You and your blood! Where were you when it would have made a difference what happens to me? Why didn’t you try to get even with me after I raped you? Why wait until now? If you’d made me pay for what I did then, maybe I would have figured out what’s going on before this. All that generosity-! It was cruel. Oh, Lena! I didn’t even understand what I’d done to you until it was too late, too late, I couldn’t help myself. What are you waiting for? Torture me! I need pain!”

“You need food,” the Healer muttered as if he had disgusted her. With one hand she fixed his jaw in an odd compelling grip while the other placed two or three treasure-berries in his mouth. “Swallow the seeds. They, too, will sustain you.”

He wanted to spit out the aliantha, but her grip made him chew in spite of himself. Her other hand stroked his throat until he swallowed, then fed him more of the berries. Soon she had coerced him to eat several mouthfuls. He could feel sustenance flowing into him, yet for some reason it seemed to feed his deep slumber rather than his cunning. Before long he could not remember what he had been saying. An involuntary drowsiness shone into him from the trees. He was unable to resist or comply when the Healer lifted him from the grass.

Grunting at the strain, she raised his limp form until he was half erect in her arms. Then she leaned him against her back with his arms over her shoulders, and gripped his upper arms like the handles of a burden. His feet dragged behind him; he dangled on her squat shoulders. But she bore his weight, carried him like a dead sack into the pale white night of Morinmoss.

While he drowsed, she took him laboriously farther and farther into the secret depths of the Forest. And as they left its borders behind, they passed into warmer air and greater health-a region where spring had not been quenched by Lord Foul’s winter. Leaves multiplied and spread out around bird nests to cloak the branches; moss and grass and small woodland animals increased among the trees. A defying spirit was abroad in this place- resisting cold, nourishing growth, affirming Morinmoss’s natural impulse toward buds and new sap and arousal. It was as if the ancient Forestals had returned, bringing with them the wood’s old knowledge of itself.

Yet even in its secret heart Morinmoss was not impervious to the Despiser’s fell influence. Temperatures rose above the freezing point, but failed to climb any higher. The leaves had no spring profusion; they grew thinly, in dark bitter greens rather than in hale verdancy. The animals wore their winter coats over bones that were too gaunt for true spring. If a Forestal had indeed returned to Morinmoss, he lacked the potency of his olden predecessors.

No, it was more likely that the monolithic Colossus of the Fall had shrugged off its brooding slumber to take a hand in the defences of the Forest. And it was more likely still that Caerroil Wildwood was reaching out from his fastness in Garroting Deep, doing what he could across the distance to preserve old Morinmoss.

Nevertheless, this lessening of winter was a great boon to the trees, and to the denizens of the Forest. It kept alive many things which might have been among the first to die when Lord Foul interdicted spring. For that reason among others, the Unfettered Healer trudged onward with Covenant on her back. The defying spirit had not only tolerated both her and him; it had summoned her to him. She could not refuse. Though she was old, and found Covenant painfully heavy, she sustained herself by sucking moisture from the moss, and plodded under him toward her home among the secrets of the Forest.

The tree shine had lapsed into dim grey dawn before her journey ended at a low cave in the bank of a hill. Thrusting aside the moss which curtained its small entrance, she stooped and dragged Covenant behind her into the modest single chamber of her dwelling.

The cave was not large. It was barely deep enough for her to stand erect in its centre, and its oval floor was no more than fifteen feet wide. But it was a cosy home for one person. It had comfort enough in the soft loam of its walls and its beds of piled dry leaves. It was warm, protected from the winter. And when other lights were withdrawn, it was lit in ghostly filigree by the tree roots which held its walls and ceiling. In its underground safety, her small cookfire was not a threat to the Forest.

In addition to the low embers which awaited her against one wall, she possessed a pot of graveling. Dropping Covenant wearily on the bed, she opened the graveling and used some of its heat to resurrect her fire. Then she set her stiff old bones on the floor and rested for a long time.