Thomas Covenant 03: Power That Preserves (25 page)

With a dim smile, Foamfollower said, “I have lived a brusque life. The sound of my own voice is no longer so attractive to me.”

“Is that a fact?” Covenant drawled. “I’ve heard worse.”

“Perhaps,” Foamfollower said softly. But he did not explain.

The Giant’s reticence made Covenant want to ask more questions, attack his own ignorance somehow. He was sure that the issues at stake were large, that the things he did not yet know about the Land’s doom were immensely important. But he remembered the way in which he had extracted information from Bannor on the plateau of Rivenrock. He could not forget the consequences of what he had done. He left Foamfollower’s secrets alone.

Down the ravine from him, Lena’s slumber became more restless. He shivered to himself as she began to flinch from side to side, whimpering under her breath. An impulse urged him to go to her, prevent her from thrashing about for fear that she might break her old, frail bones; but he resisted. He could not afford all that she wanted to mean to him.

Yet when she jerked up and looked frantically around her, found that he was gone from her side—when she cried out piercingly, as if she had been abandoned—he was already halfway down the ravine toward her. Then she caught sight of him. Surging up from her blankets, she rushed to meet him, threw herself into his arms. There she clung to him so that her sobs were muffled in his shoulder.

With his right hand—its remaining fingers as numb and awkward as if they should have been amputated—he stroked her thin white hair. He tried to hold her consolingly to make up for his utter lack of comfortable words. Slowly she regained control of herself. When he eased the pressure of his embrace, she stepped back. “Pardon me, beloved,” she said contritely. “I feared that you had left me. I am weak and foolish, or I would not have forgotten that you are the Unbeliever. You deserve better trust.”

Covenant shook his head dumbly, as if he wished to deny everything and did not know where or how to begin.

“But I could not bear to be without you,” she went on. “In deep nights—when the cold catches at my breast until I cannot keep it out—and the mirror lies to me, saying that I have not kept myself unchanged for you—I have held to the promise of your return. I have not faltered, no! But I learned that I could not bear to be without you—not again. I have earned—I have— But I could not bear it—to sneak alone into the night and crouch in hiding as if I were ashamed—not again.”

“Not again,” Covenant breathed. In her old face he could see Elena clearly now, looking so beautiful and lost that his love for her wrenched his heart. “As long as I’m stuck in this thing—I won’t go anywhere without you.”

But she seemed to hear only his proviso, not his promise. With anguish in her face, she asked, “Must you depart?”

“Yes.” The stiffness of his mouth made it difficult for him to speak gently; he could not articulate without tearing at his newly formed scabs. “I don’t belong here.”

She gasped at his words as if he had stabbed her with them. Her gaze fell away from his face. Panting she murmured, “Again! I cannot—cannot— Oh, Atiaran my mother! I love him. I have given my life without regret. When I was young, I ached to follow you to the Loresraat to succeed so boldly that you could say, ‘There is the meaning of my life, there in my daughter.’ I ached to marry a Lord. But I have given—”

Abruptly she caught the front of Covenant’s jacket in both hands, pulled herself close to him, thrust her gaze urgently at his face. “Thomas Covenant, will you marry me?”

Covenant gaped at her in horror.

The excitement of the idea carried her on in a rush. “Let us marry! Oh, dearest one, that would restore me. I could bear any burden. We do not need the permission of the elders—I have spoken to them many times of my desires. I know the rites, the solemn promises—I can teach you. And the Giant can witness the sharing of our lives.” Before Covenant could gain any control over his face, she was pleading with him. “Oh, Unbeliever! I have borne your daughter. I have ridden the Ranyhyn that you sent to me. I have waited—! Surely I have shown the depth of my love for you. Beloved, marry me. Do not refuse.”

Her appeal made him cringe, made him feel grotesque and unclean. In his pain, he wanted to turn his back on her, push her from him and walk away. Part of him was already shouting,
You’re crazy, old woman! It’s your daughter I love!
But he restrained himself. With his shoulders hunched like a strangler’s to choke the violence of his responses, he gripped Lena’s wrists and pulled her hands from his jacket. He held them up so that his fingers were directly in front of her face. “Look at my hands,” he rasped. “Look at my fingers.”

She stared at them wildly.

“Look at the sickness in them. They aren’t just cold—they’re sick, numb with sickness almost all the way across my palms. That’s my disease.”

“You are closed to me,” she said desolately.

“That’s leprosy, I tell you! It’s there—even if you’re blind to it, it’s there. And there’s only one way you can get it. Prolonged exposure. You might get it if you stayed around me long enough. And children—what’s marriage without children?” He could not keep the passion out of his voice. “Children are even more susceptible. They get it more easily—children and—and old people. When I get wiped out of the Land the next time, you’ll be left behind, and the only absolutely guaranteed legacy you’ll have from me is leprosy. Foul will make sure of it. On top of everything else, I’ll be responsible for contaminating the entire Land.”

“Covenant—beloved,” Lena whispered, “I beg you. Do not refuse.” Her eyes swam with tears, torn by a cruel effort to see herself as she really was. “Behold, I am frail and faulty. I have neither worth nor courage to preserve myself alone. I have given— Please, Thomas Covenant.” Before he could stop her, she dropped to her knees. “I beg—do not shame me in the eyes of my whole life.”

His defensive rage was no match for her. He snatched her up from her knees as if he meant to break her back, but then he held her tenderly, put all the gentleness of which he was capable into his face. For an instant, he felt he had in his hands proof that he—not Lord Foul—was responsible for the misery of the Land. And he could not accept that responsibility without rejecting her. What she asked him to do was to forget—

He knew that Foamfollower was watching him. But if Triock and Mhoram and Banner had been behind him as well—if even Trell and Atiaran had been present—he would not have changed his answer.

“No, Lena,” he said softly. “I don’t love you right—I don’t have the right kind of love to marry you. I’d only be cheating you. You’re beautiful—beautiful. Any other man wouldn’t wait for you to ask him. But I’m the Unbeliever, remember? I’m here for a reason.” With a sick twisting of his lips that was as close as he could come to a smile, he finished, “Berek Halfhand didn’t marry his Queen, either.”

His words filled him with disgust. He felt that he was telling her a lie worse than the lie of marrying her—that any comfort he might try to offer her violated the severe truth. But as she realized what he was saying, she caught hold of the idea and clasped it to her. She blinked rapidly at her tears, and the harsh effort of holding her confusion at bay faded from her face. In its place, a shy smile touched her lips. “Am I your Queen then, Unbeliever?” she asked in a tone of wonder.

Roughly Covenant hugged her so that she could not see the savagery which white-knuckled his countenance. “Of course.” He forced up the words as if they were too thick for his aching throat. “No one else is worthy.”

He held her, half fearing she would collapse if he let her go, but after a long moment, she withdrew from his embrace. With a look that reminded him of her sprightly girlhood, she said, “Let us tell the Giant,” as if she wished to announce something better than a betrothal.

Together they turned and climbed arm in arm up the ravine toward Saltheart Foamfollower.

When they reached him, they found that his buttressed visage was still wet with weeping. Gray ice sheened his face, hung like beads from his stiff beard. His hands were gripped and straining across his knees. “Foamfollower,” Lena said in surprise, “this is a moment of happiness. Why do you weep?”

His hands jerked up to scrub away the ice, and when it was gone, he smiled at her with wonderful fondness. “You are too beautiful, my Queen,” he told her gently. “You surpass me.”

His response made her shine with pleasure. For a moment, her old flesh blushed youthfully, and she met the Giant’s gaze with joy in her eyes. Then a recollection started her. “But I am remiss. I have been asleep, and you have not eaten. I must cook for you.” Turning lightly, she scampered down the ravine toward Foamfollower’s supplies.

The Giant glanced up at the chill sky, then looked at Covenant’s gaunt face. His cavernous eyes glinted sharply, as if he understood what Covenant had been through. As gently as he had spoken to Lena, he asked, “Do you now believe in the Land?”

“I’m the Unbeliever. I don’t change.”

“Do you not?”

“I am going to”—Covenant’s shoulders hunched—“exterminate Lord Foul the bloody Despiser. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“Oh, it is enough for me,” Foamfollower said with sudden vehemence. “I require nothing more. But it does not suffice for you. What do you believe—what is your faith?”

“I don’t know.”

Foamfollower looked away again at the weather. His heavy brows hid his eyes, but his smile seemed sad, almost hopeless. “Therefore I am afraid.”

Covenant nodded grimly, as if in agreement.

Nevertheless, if Lord Foul had appeared before him at that moment, he, Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and leper, would have tried to tear the Despiser’s heart out with his bare hands.

He needed to know how to use the white wild magic gold.

But there were no answers in the meal Lena cooked for him and Foamfollower, or in the gray remainder of the afternoon, which he spent huddled over the fire-stones with Lena resting drowsily against him, or in the dank, suffering twilight that finally brought his waiting to an end. When Foamfollower led the way eastward out of the ravine, Covenant felt that he understood nothing but the wind which blew through him like scorn for the impotence of sunlight and warmth. And after that he had no more time to think about it. All his attention was occupied with the work of stumbling numbly through the benighted hills.

Traveling was difficult for him. His body’s struggle to recover from injury and inanition drained his strength; the bitter cold drained his strength. He could not see where to place his feet, could not avoid tripping, falling, bruising himself on insensate dirt and rock. Yet he kept going, pushed himself after Foamfollower until the sweat froze on his forehead and his clothing grew crusted with stains of ice. His resolve held him. In time, he even became dimly grateful that his feet were numb, so that he could not feel the damage he was doing to himself.

He had no sense of duration or progress; he measured out the time in rest halts, in
aliantha
unexpectedly handed to him out of the darkness by Foamfollower. Such things sustained him. But eventually he stopped rubbing the ice from his nose and lips, from his forehead and his fanatical beard; he allowed the gray cold to hang like a mask on his features, as if he were becoming a creature of winter. And he stumbled on in the Giant’s wake.

When Foamfollower stopped at last, shortly before dawn, Covenant simply dropped to the snow and fell asleep.

Later, the Giant woke him for breakfast, and he found Lena sleeping beside him, curled against the cold. Her lips were faintly tinged with blue, and she shivered from time to time, unable to get warm. Her years showed clearly now in the lines of her face and in the frail, open-mouthed rise and fall of her breathing. Covenant roused her carefully, made her eat hot food until her lips lost their cold hue and the veins in her temples became less prominent. Then, despite her protests, he put her down in blankets and lay beside her until she went back to sleep.

Sometime later, he roused himself to finish his own breakfast. Calculating backward, he guessed that the Giant had been without rest for at least the last three days and nights. So he said abruptly, “I’ll let you know when I can’t stay awake anymore,” took the graveling pot, and moved off to find a sheltered place where he could keep watch. There he sat and watched daylight ooze into the air like seepage through the scab of an old wound.

He awoke late in the afternoon to find Foamfollower sitting beside him, and Lena preparing a meal a short distance away. He jerked erect, cursing inwardly. But his companions did not appear to have suffered from his dereliction. Foamfollower met his gaze with a smile and said, “Do not be alarmed. We have been safe enough—though I was greatly weary and slept until midday. There is a deer run north of us, and some of the tracks are fresh. Deer would not remain here in the presence of marauder spoor.”

Covenant nodded. His breath steamed heavily in the cold. “Foamfollower,” he muttered, “I am incredibly tired of being so bloody mortal.”

But that night he found the going easier. In spite of the encroaching numbness of his hands and feet, some of his strength had returned. And as Foamfollower led him and Lena eastward, the mountains moved away from them on the south, easing the ruggedness of the hills. As a result, he was better able to keep up the pace.

Yet the relaxation of the terrain caused another problem. Since they were less protected from the wind, they often had to walk straight into the teeth of Lord Foul’s winter. In that wind, Covenant’s inmost clothing seemed to turn to ice, and he moved as if he were scraping his chest raw like a penitent.

Still, he had enough stamina left at the end of the night’s march to take the first watch. The Giant had chosen to camp in a small hollow sheltered on the east by a low hill; and after they had eaten, Foamfollower and Lena lay down to sleep while Covenant took a position under a dead, gnarled juniper just below the crown of the knoll. From there, he looked down at his companions, resting as if they trusted him completely. He was determined not to fail them again.