door shut.
Covenant stood blinking in the relative darkness and watched as Foamfollower snatched up the three remaining spears, took them to the doorway, then broke them in pieces and jammed the pieces into the cracks of the door to wedge it shut.
When he was done, he started away from the wall. Only then did he realize that Covenant had not obeyed him. At once, he pounced on the Unbeliever, caught him by the arm. “Fool!” he snapped, swinging Covenant toward the far passage. “Do you mock me?” But his hand was slick with blood. He lost his hold, accidentally sent Covenant reeling to jolt heavily against the stone.
Covenant slumped down the wall, gasping to regain his breath. “Foamfollower-what’s happened to you?”
Foamfollower reached him, gripped his shoulders, shook him. “Do not mock me. I do such things for you!”
“Don’t do them for me,” Covenant protested. “You’re not doing them for me.”
With a snarl, the Giant picked up Covenant. “You are a fool if you believe we can survive in any other way.” Carrying the Unbeliever under his arm like an obdurate child, he loped into the maze toward Hotash Slay.
Now he turned away from the fiery sky-glow at every intersection. Covenant flopped in his grasp, demanding to be put down; but Foamfollower did not accede until he had put three turns and as many switchbacks behind him. Then he stopped and set Covenant on his feet.
Covenant staggered, regained his balance. He wanted to shout at the Giant, rage at him, demand explanations. But no words came. In spite of himself, he understood Saltheart Foamfollower. The last of the Unhomed had struck blows which could not be called back or stopped; Covenant could not pretend that he did not understand. Yet his heart cried out. He needed some other answer to his own extremity.
A moment passed before he heard the sound that consumed Foamfollower’ s attention. But then he caught it-a distant, reiterated boom like the impact of a battering ram on stone. He guessed what it was; the Despiser’s creatures were trying to break out of their tunnel into the maze. An instant later, he heard a sharp, splintering noise and shouts.
The Giant put a hand on his shoulder. “Come.”
Covenant broke into a run to keep pace with Foamfollower’s trot. Together, they hurried through the corridors.
They discarded all caution now, made no attempt to protect themselves from what might lie ahead. At every junction of the maze, they swung away from the mounting red glow, and in every curve and switchback of the corridors, they moved closer to the fire, deeper into the thick, acrid atmosphere of Gorak Krembal. Covenant felt heat in the air now, a dry, stifling heat like the windless scorching of a desert. As it grew, it sent rivulets of sweat running down his back. He panted hoarsely on the air, stumbled across the rough rock, kept running. At odd intervals, he could hear shouts of pursuit echoing over the walls of Kurash Qwellinir.
Whenever he tripped, the Giant picked him up and carried him a short way. This happened more and more often. His fatigue and inanition affected him like vertigo. In his falls, he battered himself until he felt benumbed with bruises from head to foot.
When he reached it, the change was so sudden that it almost flattened him. One moment he was lurching through a blind series of corridors, the next he was out on the shores of Hotash Slay.
He slapped into the heat and light of the lava and stopped. The Hills ended sharply; he found himself on a beach of dead ash ten yards from a moiling red river of molten stone.
Under the blank dome of night, Hotash Slay curved away from him out of sight on both sides. It bubbled and seethed, sent up flaring spouts of lava and brimstone into the air, swirled as if it were boiling where it stood rather than flowing. Yet it made no sound; it hit Covenant’s ears silently, as if he had been stricken deaf. He felt that the flesh was being scorched from his bones, felt that he was suffocating on hot sulphur, but the lava seethed weirdly across his gaze as if it were inaudible-a nightmare manifestation, impossibly vivid and unreal.
At first, it dominated his sight, stretched from this ashen shore to the farthest limit of any horizon. But when he blinked back the damp heat-blur from his eyes, he saw that the lava was less than fifty yards wide. Beyond 11, he could make out nothing but a narrow marge of ash. The hot red light cast everything else into darkness, made the night on the far side look as black and abysmal as the open throat of hell.
He groaned at that prospect, at the thought of Foul’s Creche standing murderous and hidden beyond this impassable fire. Here all his purpose and pain came to nothing. Hotash Slay could not be crossed. Then a burst of echoed yelps jerked him around. He expected to see creatures pouring out of the maze.
The sound died again as the pursuit charged into less resonant corridors. But it could not be far behind them. “Foamfollower!” Covenant cried, and his voice cracked with fear despite his efforts to control it. “What do we do?”
“Listen to me!” Foamfollower said. A fever of urgency was on him. “We must cross now-before we are seen. If you are seen-if Soulcrusher knows that you have crossed-he will hunt for you on the far side. He will capture you.”
“Cross?” Covenant gaped. “Me?”
“If we are not seen, he will not guess what we have done. He will judge that you are elsewhere in the maze-he will hunt you there, not on the promontory of Ridjeck Thome.”
“Cross that? Are you crazy? What do you think I am?” He could not believe what he was hearing. In the past, he had assumed that he and Foamfollower would somehow get beyond Hotash Slay, but he had made that assumption because he had not visualized this moat of lava around Foul’s dwelling place, had not conceived the true immensity of the obstacle. Now he saw his folly. He felt that if he went two steps closer to the lava, his skin would begin to char.
“No,” replied Foamfollower. His voice was full of fatality. “I have striven to prepare myself. It may be that in doing this I will anneal the long harm of my life before I die. My friend, I will bear you across.”
At once, he lifted Covenant into the air, placed him sitting upon his broad shoulders.
“Put me down!” Covenant protested. “What the hell are you doing?”
The Giant swung around to face the fiery liquefaction of the stone. “Do not breathe!” he barked fiercely. “My strength will help you to endure the heat, but it will sear your lungs if you breathe!”
“Damnation, Giant! Put me down! You’re going to kill us!”
“I am the last of the Giants,” Foamfollower grated. “I will give my life as I choose.”
Before Covenant could say another word, Foamfollower sprinted down the ashen beach toward the lava of Hotash Slay.
From the last edge of the shore, he leaped mightily out over the molten stone. As his feet touched the lava, he began to run with all his great Giantish strength toward the far shore.
The swift blast of heat almost snuffed out Covenant’s consciousness. He heard a distant wailing, but moments passed before he realized that it came from his throat. The fire blinded him, wiped everything but red violence out of his sight. It tore at him as if it were flailing the flesh from his bones.
But it did not kill him. Endurance flowed into him from the Giant. And his ring ached on his half hand as if it were absorbing his torment, easing the strain on his flesh.
He could feel Foamfollower sinking under him. The lava was thicker than mud or quicksand, but with each stride the Giant fell deeper into it. By the time his long surging strides had covered half the distance, he was in over his thighs. Yet he did not falter. Agony shot up through his shoulders at Covenant. Still he thrust himself forward, stretching every sinew past all limits in his effort to reach the far bank.
Covenant stopped wailing to hold his breath, though Foamfollower’s pain seemed to burn him worse than the heat of the lava. He tried to grasp the white gold with his mind, pull strength from it to aid the Giant. But he could not tell whether or not he succeeded. The red fire blinded his perceptions. In another two strides, Foamfollower had sunk to his waist. He gripped Covenant’s ankles, boosted him up so that the Unbeliever was standing on his shoulders. Covenant wavered on that heaving perch, but Foamfollower’s hold on his ankles was as strong as iron, kept him erect.
Two more strides-the lava reached Foamfollower’s chest. He mastered his pain for one instant to gasp out over the silent fire, “Remember the
Covenant could see nothing, did not know how far they had come. Reeling over the lava, he held his breath,
