Thomas Covenant 03: Power That Preserves (41 page)

When the food was ready, she fed herself and Covenant, then gave him more of the soporific broth, so that he would not arise to strike her again. Then she banked her cookfire, pulled her tattered cloak tightly around her, and went agedly to sleep leaning against the pile of leaves that had been her bed.

In the days that followed, she rested, tended Covenant’s madness, and tried to remember courage. His need made her heart quail in her old bosom. Even in his slumber she could see that his mind was being eaten away by its ingrown torments. As his body regained its strength, her potions slowly lost their ability to control the restlessness of his dream-ridden sleep. He began to flail his arms and jabber deliriously, like a man snared in the skein of a nightmare. At unexpected moments, his ring gave out white gleams of passion; and when by chance the Healer saw them squarely, they seemed to pierce her like a voice of misery, beseeching her to her work.

The Forest itself echoed his distress. Its mood bent in toward her like a demand, a compulsion as unmistakable as the summons which had called her to him in the beginning. She did not know why Morinmoss cared; she only felt its caring brush her cheek like the palm of authority, warning her. He needed to be healed. If it were not done in time, the essential fabric of his being would rot beyond all restitution.

At last she became aware of time; she felt in the brightness of the tree shine that somewhere behind the impenetrable clouds moved a dark moon, readying itself for a new phase of the Despiser’s power. She forced herself to unclench her hesitations, one by one, and to face her work again.

Then she built her high blaze for the second time and made ready her rare powder. While the hard wood took fire, she set both water and food on the shelf above Covenant so that if he regained consciousness before she did, he would not have to search for what he needed. A fatal mood was on her, and she did not believe she would survive. “Mercy,” she muttered as the fire mounted, “mercy.” She uttered the word as if she were seeking a benediction for herself.

Soon the flames filled her cave with light and heat, flushing the withered skin of her cheeks. The time had come; she could feel the power limping in her like a sere lover, oddly frail and masterful, yearning for its chance to rise up once more and take her—yearning, and yet strangely inadequate, old, as if it could no longer match what it remembered of its desires. For a moment, her blood deserted her; weakness filled all her muscles, so that the leather pouch fell from her fingers. But then she stooped to regain it, thrust her trembling hand into it, threw its dust into the fire as if that gesture were her last, best approximation of courage.

As the potent aroma of the dust spread its arms, took all the air of the cave into its embrace, began its slow transubstantiation of the firelight, she stood near Covenant’s head and locked her quavering knees. Staring brownly at his forehead while the heat and illumination of the blaze came into consonance with her attention, she passed beyond the verges of volition and became once more the vessel of her power. Around her the cave grew dim as the rich, loamy light of the bond wove itself between her pupilless orbs and his sick, mad mind. And before her Covenant tensed, stiffened—eyes staring gauntly, neck corded, knuckles white—as if her power clutched his very soul with fear.

Trembling she reached out her hands, placed her palms flat against the gathered thunder of his forehead.

The next instant, she recoiled as if he had scalded her. “No!” she cried. Horror flooded her, she foundered in it. “You ask too much!” Deep within her, she fought to regain her self-command, fought to thrust down the power, deny it, return to herself so that she would not be destroyed. “I cannot heal this!” But the man’s madness came upon her as if he had reached out and caught her wrists. Wailing helplessly, she returned to him, replaced her palms on his forehead.

The terror of it rushed into her, filled her until it burst between her lips like a shriek. Yet she could not withdraw. His madness pounded through her as she sank into it, trying not to see what lay at its root. And when at last it made her see, forced her to behold itself, the leering disease of its source, she knew that she was ruined. She wrenched her seared hands from his head and went hunting, scrabbling frantically among her possessions.

Still shrieking, she pounced upon a long stone cooking knife, snatched it up, aimed it at his vulnerable heart.

He lay under the knife like a sacrifice defiled with leprosy.

But before she could stab out his life, consummate his unclean pain in death, a host of glaucous, alien gleams leaped like music into the air around her. They fell on her like dew, clung to her like moist melody, stayed her hand; they confined her power and her anguish, held all things within her until her taut, soundless cry imploded. They contained her until she broke under the strain of things that could not be contained. Then they let her fall.

Gleaming like the grief of trees, they sang themselves away.

FOURTEEN: Only Those Who Hate

Covenant first awoke after a night and a day. But the stupor of essential sleep was still on him, and he only roused himself at the behest of a nagging thirst. When he sat up in the bed of leaves, he found a water jug on a shelf by his head. He drank deeply, then saw that a bowl of fruit and bread also occupied the shelf. He ate, drank again, and went back to sleep as soon as he had stretched himself out among the warm dry leaves once more.

The next time, he came languorously out of slumber amid the old gentle fragrance of the bed. When he opened his eyes, he discovered that he was looking up through a dim gloom of daylight at the root-woven roof of a cave. He turned his head, looked around the earthen walls until he located the moss-hung entrance which admitted so little light. He did not know where he was, or how he had come here, or how long he had slept. But his ignorance caused him no distress. He had recovered from fear. On the strength of unknown things which lay hidden behind the veil of his repose, he felt sure that he had no need to fear.

That feeling was the only emotion in him. He was calm, steady, and hollow—empty and therefore undisturbed—as if the same cleansing or apotheosis which had quenched his terror had also drained every other passion from him. For a time, he could not even remember what those passions had been; between him and his past lay nothing but sleep and an annealed gulf of extravagant fear.

Then he caught the first faint scent of death in the air. It was not urgent, and he did not react to it immediately. While he took its measure, made sure of it, he stretched his sleep-stiff muscles, feeling the flex of their revitalization. Whatever had brought him to this place had happened so long ago that even his body appeared to have forgotten it. Yet his recovery gave him little satisfaction. He accepted it with complete and empty confidence, for reasons that were hidden from him.

When he was ready, he swung his feet off the bed and sat up. At once, he saw the old brown woman lying crumpled on the floor. She was dead with an outcry still rigid on her lips and a blasted look in the staring loam of her eyes. In the dim light, she seemed like a wracked mound of earth. He did not know who she was—he gazed at her with an effort of recollection and could not remember ever having seen her before—but she gave him the vague impression that she, too, had died for him.

That’s enough, he said dimly to himself. Other memories began to float to the surface like the dead seaweed and wreckage of his life. This must not happen again.

He looked down at the unfamiliar white robe for a moment, then pushed the cloth aside so that he could see his ankle.

It was broken, he thought in hollow surprise. He could remember breaking it; he could remember wrestling with Pietten, falling— He could remember using Pietten’s spear to help him walk until the fracture froze. Yet now it showed no sign of any break. He tested it against the floor, half expecting its wholeness to vanish like an illusion. He stood up, hopped from foot to foot, sat down again. Muttering dully to himself, By hell, by hell, he gave himself his first VSE in many days.

He found that he was more healed than he would have believed possible. The damage which he had done to his feet was almost completely gone. His gaunt hands flexed easily—though they had lost flesh, and his ring hung loosely on his wedding finger. Except for a faint numbness at their tips, his ears and nose had recovered from frostbite. His very bones were full of deep, sustaining warmth.

But other things had not changed. His cheeks felt as stiff as ever. Along his forehead was the lump of a badly healed scar; it was tender to the touch, as if beneath the surface it festered against his skull. And his disease still gnawed its way remorselessly up the nerves of his hands and feet. His fingers were numb to the palms, and only the tops of his feet and the backs of his heels remained sensitive. So the fundamental condition of his existence remained intact. The law of his leprosy was graven within him, carved with the cold chisel of death as if he were made of dolomite or marble rather than bone and blood and humanity.

For that reason he remained unmoved in the hollow center of his healing. He was a leper and had no business exposing himself to the risks of passion.

Now when he looked back at the dead woman, he remembered what he had been doing before the winter had reft him of himself; he had been carrying a purpose of destruction and hate eastward, toward Foul’s Creche. That purpose now wore the aspect of madness. He had been mad to throw himself against the winter alone, just as he had been mad to believe that he could ever challenge the Despiser. The path of his past appeared strewn with corpses, the victims of the process which had brought him to that purpose—the process of manipulation by which Lord Foul sought to produce the last fatal mistake of a direct challenge. And the result of that mistake would be a total victory for the Despiser.

He knew better now. The fallen woman taught him a kind of wisdom. He could not challenge the Despiser for the same reason that he could not make his way through the Despiser’s winter alone: the task was impossible, and mortal human beings accomplished nothing but their own destruction when they attempted the impossible. A leper’s end—prescribed and circumscribed for him by the law of his illness—awaited him not far down the road of his life. He would only hasten his journey toward that end if he lashed himself with impossible demands. And the Land would be utterly lost.

Then he realized that his inability to remember what had brought him to this place, what had happened to him in this place, was a great blessing, a giving of mercy so clear that it amazed him. Suddenly he understood at least in part why Triock had spoken to him of the
mercy
of new opportunities—and why Triock had refused to share his purpose. He put that purpose aside and looked around the cave for his clothes.

He located them in a heap against one wall, but a moment later he had decided against them. They seemed to represent participation in something that he now wished to eschew. And this white robe was a gift which the dead woman had given him as part and symbol of her larger sacrifice. He accepted it with calm, sad, hollow gratitude.

But he had already started to don his sandals before he realized how badly they reeked of illness. In days of walking, his infection had soaked into the leather, and he was loath to wear the unclean stench. He tossed the sandals back among his discarded apparel. He had come barefoot into this dream, and knew that he would go barefoot and sole-battered out of it again, no matter how he tried to protect himself. In spite of his reawakening caution, he chose not to worry about his feet.

The faint attar of death in the air reminded him that he could not remain in the cave. He drew the robe tight around him and stooped through the entrance to see if he could discover where he was.

Outside under the gray clouds of day, the sight of the Forest gave him another surge of empty surprise. He recognized Morinmoss; he had crossed this wood once before. His vague knowledge of the Land’s geography told him in general terms where he was, but he had no conception of how he had come here. The last thing in his memory was the slow death of Lord Foul’s winter.

There was little winter to be seen here. The black trees leaned against each other as if they were rooted interminably in the first gray verges of spring; but the air was brisk rather than bitter, and tough grass grew sufficiently over the clear ground between the trunks. He breathed the Forest smells while he examined his unreasoning confidence, and after a moment he felt sure that Morinmoss also was something he should not fear.

When he turned to reenter the cave, he had chosen at least the first outlines of his new road.

He did not attempt to bury the woman; he had no digging tool and no desire to offer any injury to the soil of the Forest. He wore her robe in part to show his respect for her, but he could not think of any other gesture to make toward her. He wanted to apologize for what he was doing—for what he had done—but had no way to make her hear him. At last he placed her on her bed, arranged her stiff limbs as best he could to give her an appearance of dignity. Then he found a sack among her possessions and packed into it all the food he could find.

After that, he drank the last of her water and left behind the jug to save weight. With a pang of regret, he also left behind the pot of graveling; he knew he would want its warmth, but did not know how to tend it. The knife which lay oddly in the center of the floor he did not take because he had had enough of knives. Remembering Lena, he lightly kissed the woman’s cold, withered cheek. Then he shrugged his way out of the cave, muttering, as if the word were a talisman he had learned from her sacrifice, “Mercy.”

He strode away into the day of his new comprehension.

He did not hesitate over the choice of directions. He knew from past experience that the terrain of Morinmoss sloped generally downward from northwest to southeast, toward the Plains of Ra. He followed the slopes with his sack over his shoulder and his heart hollow—steady because it was full of lacks, like the heart of a man who had surrendered himself to the prospect of a colorless future.