“You’re right,” Covenant sighed. He did not intend to escape. “But there’s no reason for you to get yourself killed. Just help me find that secret door-then get out of here.”
“Abandon you?” Foamfollower adjusted the ill-fitting buckler with an expression of distaste. “How could I leave this place? I will not attempt Hotash Slay again.”
“Jump into the Sea-swim away-I don’t know.” A sense of urgency mounted in him; they could not afford to spend time debating at the very portal of Foul’s Creche. “Just don’t make me responsible for you too.”
“On the contrary,” the Giant replied evenly, “it is I who am responsible for you. I am your summoner.”
Covenant winced. “I’m not worried about that.”
“Nor am I,” Foamfollower returned with a grin. “But I mislike this talk of abandonment. My friend-I am acquainted with such things.”
They regarded each other gravely; and in the Giant’s gaze Covenant saw as clearly as words that he could not take responsibility for his friend, could not make his friend’s decisions. He could only accept Foamfollower’s help and be grateful. He groaned in pain at the outcome he foresaw. “Then let’s go,” he said dismally. “I’m not going to last much longer.”
In answer, the Giant took his arm, supported him. Side by side, they turned toward the dark mouth of the cave.
Side by side, they penetrated the gloom of Foul’s Creche.
To their surprise, the darkness vanished as if they had passed through a veil of obscurity. Beyond it, they found themselves in the narrow end of an egg-shaped hall. It was coldly lit from end to end as if green sea-ice were aflame in its walls; the whole place seemed on the verge of bursting into frigid fire.
Involuntarily, they paused, stared about them. The hall’s symmetry and stonework were perfect. At its widest point, it opened into matched passages which led up to the towers, and the floor of its opposite end sank flawlessly down to form a wide, spiral stairway into the rock. Everywhere the stone stretched and met without seams, cracks, junctures; the hall was as smoothly carved, polished, and even, as unblemished by ornament, feature, error, as if the ideal conception of its creator had been rendered into immaculate stone without the interference of hands that slipped, minds that misunderstood. It was obviously not Giant-work; it lacked anything which might intrude on the absolute exaction of its shape, lacked the Giantish enthusiasm for detail. Instead, it seemed to surpass any kind of mortal craft. It was preternaturally perfect.
Covenant gaped at it. While Foamfollower tore himself away to begin searching the side walls for the door of which the
When he reached the broad spiral of the stairway, he found that its open centre was like a great well, curving gradually back into the promontory as it descended. The stair itself was large enough to carry fifteen or twenty people abreast. Its circling drew his gaze down into the bright hole until he was leaning out from the edge to peer as far as he could; and its symmetry lent impetus to the surge of his vertigo, his irrational love and fear of falling.
But he had learned the secret of that dizziness and did not fall. His eyes searched the stairwell. And a moment later, he saw something which shook away his dangerous fascination.
Running soundlessly up out of the depths was a large band of ur-viles.
He pulled himself backward. “You better find it fast,” he called to Foamfollower. “They’re coming.”
Foamfollower did not interrupt his scrutiny of the walls. As he searched the stone with his hands and eyes, probed it for any sign of a concealed entrance, he muttered, “It is well hidden. I do not know how it is possible for stone to be so wrought. My people were not children in this craft, but they could not have dreamed such walls.”
“They had too many nightmares of their own,” gritted Covenant. “Find it! Those ur-viles are coming fast.” Remembering the creature that had caused his fall in the catacombs under Mount Thunder, he added, “They can smell white gold.”
“I am a Giant,” answered Foamfollower. “Stonework is in the very blood of my people. This doorway cannot be concealed from me.”
Then his hands found a section of the wall which felt hollow. Swiftly, he explored the section, measured its dimensions, though no sign of any door was visible in that immaculate wall.
When he had located the entrance as exactly as possible, he pressed once on the centre of its lintel.
Glimmering with green tracery, the lintel appeared in the blank wall. Doorposts spread down from it to the floor as if they had at that instant been created out of the rock, and between them the door swung noiselessly inward.
Foamfollower rubbed his hands in satisfaction. Chuckling, “As you commanded, ur-Lord,” he motioned for Covenant to precede him through the doorway.
Covenant glanced toward the stairs, then hastened into the small chamber beyond the door. Foamfollower came behind him, ducking for the lintel and the low ceiling of the chamber. At once, he closed the door, watched it dissolve back into featureless stone. Then he went ahead of Covenant to the corridor beyond the chamber.
This passage was as bright and cold as the outer hall. Foamfollower and Covenant could see that it sloped steeply downward, straight into the depths of the promontory. Looking along it, Covenant hoped that it would take him where he needed to go; he was too weak to sneak all through the Creche hunting for his doom.
Neither of them spoke; they did not want to risk being heard by the ur-viles. Foamfollower glanced at Covenant, shrugged once, and started down into the tunnel.
The low ceiling forced Foamfollower to move in a crouch, but he travelled down the corridor as swiftly as he could. And Covenant kept pace with him by leaning against the Giant’s back and simply allowing gravity to pull his strengthless legs from stride to stride. Like twins, brothers connected to each other despite all their differences by a common umbilical need, they crouched and shambled together through the rock of Ridjeck Thome.
As they descended, Covenant fell several times. His sense of urgency, his fear, grew in the constriction of the corridor; but it drained rather than energized him, left him as slack as if he had already been defeated. Livid cold drenched him, soaked into his bones like the fire of an absolute chill, surrounded him until he began to feel strangely comfortable in it-comfortable and drowsy, as if, like an exhausted sojourner, he were at last arriving home, sinking down before his rightful hearth. Then at odd moments he caught glimpses of the spirit of this place, the uncompromising flawlessness which somehow gave rise to, affirmed, the most rabid and insatiable malice. In this air, contempt and comfort became the same thing. Foul’s Creche was the domain of a being who understood perfection — a being who loathed life, not because it was any threat to him, but because its mortal infestations offended the defining passion of his existence. In those glimpses, Covenant’s numb, lacerated feet seemed to miss the stone, and he fell headlong at Foamfollower’s back.
But they kept moving, and at last they reached the end of the tunnel. It opened into a series of unadorned, unfurnished apartments-starkly exact and symmetrical-which showed no sign that they had ever been, or ever would be, occupied by anyone. Yet the cold, green light shone everywhere, and the air was as sharp as ice crystals. Foamfollower’s sweat formed a cluster of emeralds in his beard, and he was shivering, despite his normal immunity to temperature.
Beyond the apartments, they found a chain of stairs which took them downward through blank halls, empty caverns large enough to house the most fearsome banes, uninhabited galleries where an orator could have stormed at an audience of thousands. Here again they found no sign of any occupation. All this part of the Creche was for Lord Foul’s private use; no ur-viles or other creatures intruded, had ever intruded. Foamfollower hastened Covenant through the eerie perfection. Down they went, always down, seeking the depths in which Lord Foul would cherish the Illearth Stone. And around them, the ancient ill of Ridjeck Thome grew heavier and more dolorous at each deeper level. In time, Foamfollower became too cold to shiver; and Covenant shambled along at his side as if only an insistent yearning to find the Creche’s chillest place, the point of absolute ice, kept him from falling asleep where he was.
The instinct which took them downward at every opportunity did not mislead them. Gradually, Foamfollower began to sense the location of the Stone; the radiance of that bane became palpable to his sore nerves.
