At last he rubbed the caked fatigue out of his eyes and sat up. Foamfollower was gazing at him with amusement. "Ah, Covenant," the Giant said, "we are a pair. You are so bedraggled and sober- And I fear my own appearance is not improved." He struck a begrimed pose. "What is your opinion?"
For a moment, Foamfollower looked as gay and carefree as a playing child. The sight gave Covenant a pang. How long had it been since he had heard the Giant laugh? "Wash your face,'' he croaked with as much humor as he could manage. "You look ridiculous."
"You honor me," Foamfollower returned. But he did not laugh. As his amusement faded, he turned away and splashed a little water on his face to clean it.
Covenant followed his example, though he was too tired to feel dirty. He drank three swallows from the jug for breakfast, then pried himself unsteadily to his feet.
In the distance, he could see a few treetops sticking out of the broad brown swath of the flood. No other signs remained visible to mark the bosk of the Ruinwash.
Opposite the flood, in the direction he and Foamfollower would now have to take, lay a long ridge of hills. They piled in layers above him until they seemed almost as high as mountains, and their scarred sides looked as desolate as if their very roots had been dead for aeons.
He groaned at the prospect. His worn flesh balked. But he had no choice; the lowlands of the Ruinwash were no longer passable.
With nothing to sustain them but frugal rations of water, he and the Giant began to climb.
The ascent was shallower than it had appeared. If Covenant had been well fed and healthy, he would not have suffered. But in his drained condition, he could hardly drag himself up the slopes. The festering wound on his forehead ached like a heavy burden attached to his skull, pulling him backward. The thick humid air seemed to clog his lungs. From time to time, he found himself lying among the stones and could not remember how he had lost his feet.
Yet with Foamfollower's help he kept going. Late that day, they crested the ridge of hills, started their descent.
Since leaving the Ruinwash, they had seen no sign of pursuit.
The next morning, after a night's rain as ponderous and rancid as if the clouds themselves were stagnant, they moved down out of the hills. As Covenant's gaunt flesh adjusted to hunger, he grew steadier-not stronger, but less febrile. He made the descent without mishap, and from the ridge he and Foamfollower traveled generally eastward out into the barren landscape.
After a foodless and dreary noon, they came to an eerie wilderness of thorns. It occupied the bottom of a wide lowland; for nearly a league, dead thorn-trees with limbs like arms and gray barbs as hard as iron stood in their way. The whole bottom looked like a ruined orchard where sharp spikes and hooks had been grown for weapons; the thorns stood in crooked rows as if they had been planted there so that they could be tended and harvested. Here and there, gaps appeared in the rows, but from a distance Covenant could not see what caused them.
Foamfollower did not want to cross the valley. Higher ground bordered the thorn wastes on both sides, and the barren trees offered no concealment; while they were down in the bottom, they could be easily seen. But again they had no choice. The wastes extended far to the north and south. They would need time to circumvent the thorns-time in which hunger could overcome them, pursuit overtake them.
Muttering to himself, Foamfollower scanned all the terrain as far as he could see, searching for any sign of the hunt. Then he led Covenant down the last slope into the thorns.
They found that the lowest branches of the trees were six or seven feet above the ground. Covenant could move erect along the crooked rows of trunks, but Foamfollower had to crouch or bend almost double to keep the barbs from ripping open his torso and head. He risked injury if he moved too quickly. As a result, their progress through the wastes was dangerously
slow.
Thick dust covered the ground under their feet. All the rain of the past nights seemed to have left this valley untouched. The lifeless dirt faced the clouds as if years of torrents could never assuage the thirst of its ancient ruin. Choking billows rose up from the strides of the travelers, filled their lungs and stung their eyes-and plumed into the sky to mark their presence as clearly as smoke.
Soon they came to one of the gaps in the thorns. To their surprise, they found that it was a mud pit. Damp clay bubbled in a small pool. In contrast to the dead dust all around it, it seemed to be seething with some kind of muddy life, but it was as cold as the winter air. Covenant shied away from it as if it were dangerous, and hurried on through the thorns as fast as Foamfollower could go.
They were halfway to the eastern edge of the valley when they heard a hoarse shout of discovery in the distance behind them. Whirling, they saw two large bands of marauders spring out of different parts of the hills. The bands came together as they charged in among the thorn-trees, howling for the blood of their prey.
Covenant and Foamfollower turned and fled.
Covenant sprinted with the energy of fear. In the first surge of flight, he had room in his mind for nothing but the effort of running, the pumping of his legs and lungs. But shortly he realized that he was pulling away from Foamfollower. The Giant's crouched stance cramped his speed; he could not use his long legs effectively without tearing his head off among the thorns. "Flee!" he shouted at Covenant. "I will hold them back!"
"Forget it!" Covenant slowed to match the Giant's pace. "We're in this together."
"Flee!" Foamfollower repeated, flailing one arm urgently as if to hurl the Unbeliever ahead.
Instead of answering, Covenant rejoined his friend. He heard the savage outcry of the pursuit as if it were clawing at his back, but he stayed with Foamfollower. He had already lost too many people who were important to him.
Abruptly, Foamfollower lurched to a halt. "Go, I say! Stone and Sea!" He sounded furious. "Do you believe I can bear to see your purpose fail for my sake?"
Covenant wheeled and stopped. "Forget it," he panted again. "I'm good for nothing without you."
Foamfollower spun to look at the charging hunters. "Then you must find the way of your white gold now. They are too many."
"Not if you keep moving! By hell! We can still beat them."
The Giant swung back to face Covenant. For an instant, his muscles bunched to carry him forward again. But then he went rigid; his head jerked up. He stared hotly through the branches into the distance past Covenant's head.
A new dread seized Covenant. He turned, followed the Giant's gaze.
There were ur-viles on the eastern slope of the valley. They rushed in large numbers toward the wastes as if they were swarming, and as they moved, they coalesced into three wedges. Covenant could see them clearly through the thorns. When they reached the bottom, they halted, wielded their staves. All along the eastern edge of the forest, they set fire to the dead trees.
The thorns flared instantly. Flames leaped up with a roar, spread rapidly through the branches from tree to tree. Each trunk became a torch to light its neighbors. In moments, Covenant and Foamfollower were cut off from the east by a wall of conflagration.
Foamfollower snatched his gaze back and forth between the fire and the charging hunters, and his eyes shot gleams of fury like battle-lust from under his massive brows. "Trapped!" he shouted as if the impossibility of the situation outraged him. But his anger had a different meaning. "They have erred! I am not so vulnerable to fire. I can break through and attack!"
"I'm vulnerable,'' Covenant replied numbly. He watched the Giant's rising rage with a nausea of apprehension in his guts. He knew what his response should have been. Foamfollower was far better equipped than he to fight the Despiser. He should have said, Take my ring and go. You can find a way to use it. You can get past those ur-viles. But his throat would not form the words. And the fear that Foamfollower would ask for his wedding band churned in him, inspired him to find an alternative. He croaked, "Can you swim in quicksand?"
The Giant stared at him as if he had said somethi
ng incomprehensible.
"The mud pits! We can hide in one of them-until the fire passes. If you can keep us from drowning."
Still Foamfollower stared. Covenant feared that the Giant was too far gone in rage to understand what he said. But a moment later Foamfollower took hold of himself. With a sharp convulsion of will, he mastered his desire to fight. "Yes!" he snapped. "Come!" At once, he scuttled away toward the fire.
They raced to find a pool of the bubbling clay near the fire before the hunters caught up with them. Covenant feared that they would be too late; even through the wild roar of the fire, he could hear his pursuers howling.
But the blaze moved with frightful rapidity. While the creatures were still several hundred yards distant, he slapped into the heat of the flames and veered aside, searching for one of the pits.
He could not find one. The rush of heat stung his eyes, half blinded him. He was too close to the fire. It chewed its way through the tree tops toward him like a world-devouring beast. He called to Foamfollower, but his voice made no sound amid the tumult of the blaze.
The Giant caught his arm, snatched him up. Running crouched like a cripple, he headed toward a pool directly under the wall of flame. The twigs and thorns nearest the pit were already bursting into hot orange flower as if they had been brought back to life by fire.
Foamfollower leaped into the mud.
His impetus carried them in over their heads, but with the prodigious strength of his legs he thrust them to the surface again. The mounting heat seemed to scorch their faces instantly. But Covenant was more afraid of the mud. He thrashed frantically for a moment, then remembered that the swiftest way to die in quicksand was to struggle. Straining against his instinctive panic, he forced himself limp. At his back, he felt Foamfollower do the same. Only their heads protruded from the mud.
They did not sink. The fire swept over them while they floated, and long moments of pain seared Covenant's face as he hung in the wet clay, hardly daring to breathe. His intense helplessness seemed to increase as the fire passed.
When the flames were gone, he and Foamfollower would be left floating in mire to defend themselves as best they could against three wedges of ur-viles without so much as moving their arms.
He tried to draw a large enough breath to shout to Foamfollower. But while he was still inhaling, hands deep in the mud pit caught his ankles and pulled him down.
[EIGHTEEN] The Corrupt
He struggled desperately, trying to regain the surface. But the mud clogged his movements, sucked at his every effort, and the hands on his ankles tugged him downward swiftly. He grappled toward Foamfollower, but found nothing. Already, he felt he was far beneath the surface of the pit.
He held his breath grimly. His obdurate instinct for survival made him keep on fighting though he knew that he could never float to the surface from this cold depth. Straining against the mud, he bent, worked his hands down his legs in an effort to reach the fingers which held him. But he could not find them. They pulled him downward-he felt their wet clench on his ankles-but his own hands passed through where those hands should have been, must have been.
In his extremity, he seemed to feel the white gold pulsing for an instant. But the pulse gave him no sensation of power, and it disappeared as soon as he reached toward it with his mind.
The air in his lungs began to fail. Red veins of light intaglioed the insides of his eyelids. He began to cry wildly, Not like this! Not like this!
The next moment, he felt that he had changed directions. While his lungs wailed, the hands pulled him horizontally, then began to take him upward. With a damp sucking noise, they heaved him out of the mud into dank, black air.
He snatched at the air in shuddering gasps. It was stale and noisome, like the air in a wet crypt, but it was life, and he gulped it greedily. For a long moment, the red blazonry in his brain blinded him to the darkness. But as his respiration subsided into dull panting, he squeezed his eyes free of mud and blinked them open, tried to see where he was.
The blackness around him was complete.
He was lying on moist clay. When he moved, his left shoulder touched a muddy wall. He got to his knees and reached up over his head; an arm's length above him, he found the ceiling. He seemed to be against one wall of a buried chamber in the clay.
A damp voice near his ear said, "He cannot see." It sounded small and frightened, but the surprise of it startled him, made him jerk away and slip panting against the wall.
"That is well," another timorous voice responded. "He might harm
us."
"It is not well. Provide light for him." This voice seemed more resolute, but it still quavered anxiously.
"No! No, no." Covenant could distinguish eight or ten speakers protesting.
The sterner voice insisted. "If we did not intend to aid him, we should not have saved him."
"He may harm us!"
"It is not too late. Drown him."
"No." The sterner voice stiffened. "We chose this risk."
"Oh! If the Maker learns-!"
"We chose, I say! To save and then slay-that would surely be Maker-work. Better that he should harm us. I will"-the voice hesitated fearfully-"I will provide light myself if I must."
"Stand ready!" speakers chorused, spreading an alarm against Covenant.
A moment later, he heard an odd slippery noise like the sound of a stick being thrust through mud. A dim red glow the color of rocklight opened in the darkness a few feet from his face.
The light came from a grotesque figure of mud standing on the floor of the chamber. It was about two feet tall, and it faced him like a clay statue formed by the unadept hands of a child. He could discern awkward limbs, vague misshapen features, but no eyes, ears, mouth, nose. Reddish pockets of mud in its brown form shone dully, giving off a scanty illumination.
He found that he was in the end of a tunnel. Near him was a wide pit of bubbling mud, and beyond it the walls, floor, and ceiling came together, sealing the space. But in the opposite direction the tunnel stretched away darkly.
There, at the limit of the light, stood a dozen or more short clay forms like the one in front of him.
They did not move, made no sound. They looked inanimate, as if they had been left behind by whatever creature had formed the tunnel. But the tunnel contained no one or nothing else that might have spoken. Covenant gaped at the gnarled shapes, and tried to think of something to say.
Abruptly, the mud pit began to seethe. Directly in front of Covenant, several more clay forms hopped suddenly out of the mire, dragging two huge feet with them. The glowing shape quickly retreated down the tunnel to make room for them. In an instant, they had heaved Foamfollower out onto the floor of the tunnel and had backed away from him to join the forms which stood watching Covenant.
Foamfollower's Giantish lungs had sustained him; he needed no time at all to recover. He flung himself around in the constricted space and lurched snarling toward the clay forms with rage in his eyes and one heavy fist upraised.
At once, the sole light went out. Amid shrill cries of fear, the mud creatures scudded away down the tunnel.
"Foamfollower!" Covenant shouted urgently. "They saved us!"
He heard the Giant come to a stop, heard him panting hoarsely. "Foamfollower," he repeated. "Giant!"
Foamfollower breathed deeply for a moment, then said, "My friend?" In the darkness, his voice sounded cramped, too full of suppressed emotions. "Are you well?"
"Well?" Covenant felt momentarily unbalanced on the brink of hysteria. But he steadied himself. "They didn't hurt me. Foamfollower-I think they saved us."
The Giant panted a while longer, regaining his self-command. "Yes," he groaned. "Yes. Now I have taught them to fear us." Then, projecting his voice down the tunnel, he said, "Please pardon me. You have indeed saved us. I have little restraint-yes, I am quick to anger, too quick. Yet without purposing to do so you wrung my heart. You took my friend and left me. I feared him dead-despair came upon me. Ban
nor of the Bloodguard told us to look for help wherever we went. Fool that I was, I did not look for it so near to Soulcrusher's demesne. When you took me also, I had no thought left but fury. I crave your pardon."
Empty silence answered him out of the darkness.
"Ah, hear me!" he called intently. "You have saved us from the hands of the Despiser. Do not abandon us now."
The silence stretched, then broke. "Despair is Maker-work," a voice said. "It was not our intent."
"Do not trust them!" other voices cried. "They are hard."
But the shuffling noise of feet came back toward Covenant and Foamfollower, and several of the clay forms lit themselves as they moved, so that the tunnel was filled with light. The creatures advanced cautiously, stopped well beyond the Giant's reach. "We also ask your pardon," said the leader as firmly as it could.
" Ah, you need not ask," Foamfollower replied. " It may be that I am slow to recognize my friends-but when I have recognized them, they have no cause to fear me. I am Saltheart Foamfollower, the"-he swallowed as if the words threatened to choke him-"the last of the Seareach Giants. My friend is Thomas Covenant, ur-Lord and bearer of the white gold."
"We know," the leader said. "We have heard. We are the jheher-rin-the aussat jheherrin Befylam. The Maker-place has no secret that the jheherrin have not heard. You were spoken of. Plans were made against you. The jheherrin debated and chose to aid you."
"If the Maker learns," a voice behind the leader quavered, "we are doomed."
"That is true. If he guesses at our aid, he will no longer suffer us. We fear for our lives. But you are his enemies. And the legends say-"
Abruptly, the leader stopped, turned to confer with the other jheherrin. Covenant watched in fascination as they whispered together. From a distance, they all looked alike, but closer inspection revealed that they were as different as the clay work of different children. They varied in size, shape, hue, timidity, tone of voice. Yet they shared an odd appearance of unsolidity. They bulged and squished when they moved as if they were only held together by a fragile skin of surface tension-as if any jar or blow might reduce them to amorphous wet mud.