Lord Foul's Bane

Nine: Jehannum

BEFORE the afternoon was over, he had lapsed into a dull, hypnotized throb of pain. His pack straps constricted the circulation in his arms, multiplied the aching of his hand; his damp socks gave him blisters to which his toes were acutely and impossibly sensitive; weariness made his muscles as awkward as lead. But Atiaran moved constantly, severely, ahead of him down the file, and he followed her as if he were being dragged by the coercion of her will. His eyes became sightless with fatigue; he lost all sense of time, of movement, of everything except pain. He hardly knew that he had fallen asleep, and he felt a detached, impersonal sense of surprise when he was finally shaken awake.

He found himself lying in twilight on the floor of the file. After rousing him, Atiaran handed him a bowl of hot broth. Dazedly, he gulped at it. When the bowl was empty, she took it and handed him a large flask of springwine. He gulped it also.

From his stomach, the springwine seemed to send long, soothing fingers out to caress and relax each of his raw muscles, loosening them until he felt that he could no longer sit up. He adjusted his pack as a pillow, then lay down to sleep again. His last sight before his eyes fell shut was of Atiaran, sitting enshadowed on the far side of the graveling pot, her face set relentlessly toward the north.

The next day dawned clear, cool, and fresh. Atiaran finally succeeded in awakening Covenant as darkness was fading from the sky. He sat up painfully, rubbed his face as if it had gone numb during the night. A moment passed before he recollected the new sensitivity of his nerves; then he flexed his hands, stared at them as if he had never seen them before. They were alive, alive.

He pushed the blanket aside to uncover his feet. When he squeezed his toes through his boots, the pain of his blisters answered sharply. His toes were as alive as his fingers.

His guts twisted sickly. With a groan, he asked himself, How long-how long is this going to go on? He did not feel that he could endure much more.

Then he remembered that he had not had on a blanket when he went to sleep the night before. Atiaran must have spread it over him.

He winced, avoided her eyes by shambling woodenly to the stream to wash his face. Where did she find the courage to do such things for him? As he splashed cold water on his neck and cheeks, he found that he was afraid of her again.

But she did not act like a threat. She fed him, checked the bandage on his injured hand, packed up the camp as if he were a burden to which she had already become habituated. Only the lines of sleeplessness around her eyes and the grim set of her mouth showed that she was clenching herself.

When she was ready to go, he gave himself a deliberate VSE, then forced his shoulders into the straps of his pack and followed her down the file as if her stiff back were a demand he could not refuse.

Before the day was done, he was an expert on that back. It never compromised; it never admitted a doubt about its authority, never offered the merest commiseration. Though his muscles tightened until they became as inarticulate as bone-though the aching rictus of his shoulders made him hunch in his pack like a cripple-though the leagues aggravated his sore feet until he hobbled along like a man harried by vultures-her back compelled him like an ultimatum: keep moving or go mad; I permit no other alternatives. And he could not deny her. She stalked ahead of him like a nightmare figure, and he followed as if she held the key to his existence.

Late in the morning, they left the end of the file, and found themselves on a heathered hillside almost directly north of the high, grim finger of Kevin's Watch. They could see the South Plains off to the west; and as soon as the file ended, the stream turned that way, flowing to some distant union with the Mithil. But Atiaran led Covenant still northward, weaving her way along fragmentary tracks and across unpathed leas which bordered the hills on her right.

To the west, the grasslands of the plains were stiff with bracken, purplish in the sunlight. And to the east, the hills rose calmly, cresting a few hundred feet higher than the path which Atiaran chose along their sides. In this middle ground, the heather alternated with broad swaths of bluegrass. The hillsides wore flowers and butterflies around thick copses of wattle and clusters of taller trees-oaks and sycamores, a few elms, and some gold-leaved trees-Atiaran called them “Gilden”- which looked like maples. All the colours-the trees, the heather, and bracken, the aliantha, the flowers, and the infinite azure sky-were vibrant with the eagerness of spring, lush and exuberant rebirth of the world.

But Covenant had no strength to take in such things. He was blind and deaf with exhaustion, pain, incomprehension. Like a penitent, he plodded on through the afternoon at Atiaran's behest.

At last the day came to an end. Covenant covered the final league staggering numbly, though he did not pass out on his feet as he had the previous day; and when Atiaran halted and dropped her pack, he toppled to the grass like a, felled tree. But his overstrained muscles twitched as if they were appalled; he could not hold them still without clenching. In involuntary restlessness, he helped Atiaran by unpacking the blankets while she cooked supper. During their meal, the sun set across the plains, streaking the grasslands with shadows and lavender; and when the stars came out he lay and watched them, trying with the help of springwine to make himself relax.

At last he faded into sleep. But his slumbers were troubled. He dreamed that he was trudging through a desert hour after hour, while a sardonic voice urged him to enjoy the freshness of the grass. The pattern ran obsessively in his mind until he felt that he was sweating anger. When the dawn came to wake him, he met it as if it were an affront to his sanity.

He found that his feet were already growing tougher, and his cut hand had healed almost completely. His overt pain was fading. But his nerves were no less alive. He could feel the ends of his socks with his toes, could feel the breeze on his fingers. Now the immediacy of these inexplicable sensations began to infuriate him. They were evidence of health, vitality-a wholeness he had spent long, miserable months of his life learning to live without-and they seemed to inundate him with terrifying implications. They seemed to deny the reality of his disease.

But that was impossible. It's one or the other, he panted fiercely. Not both. Either I'm a leper or I'm not. Either Joan divorced me or she never existed. There's no middle ground.

With an effort that made him grind his teeth, he averred, I'm a leper. I'm dreaming. That's a fact.

He could not bear the alternative. If he were dreaming, he might still be able to save his sanity, survive, endure. But if the Land were real, actual- ah, then the long anguish of his leprosy was a dream, and he was mad already, beyond hope.

Any belief was better than that. Better to struggle for a sanity he could at least recognize than to submit to a “health” which surpassed all explanation.

He chewed the gristle of such thoughts for leagues as he trudged along behind Atiaran, but each argument brought him back to the same position. The mystery of his leprosy was all the mystery he could tolerate, accept as fact. It determined his response to every other question of credibility.

It made him stalk along at Atiaran's back as if he were ready to attack her at any provocation.

Nevertheless, he did receive one benefit from his dilemma. Its immediate presence and tangibility built a kind of wall between him and the particular fears and actions which had threatened him earlier. Certain memories of violence and blood did not recur. And without shame to goad it, his anger remained manageable, discrete. It did not impel him to rebel against Atiaran's uncompromising lead.

Throughout that third day, her erect, relentless form did not relax its compulsion. Up slopes and down hillsides, across glens, around thickets-along the western margin of the hills-she drew him onward against his fuming mind and recalcitrant flesh. But early in the afternoon she stopped suddenly, looked about her as if she had heard a distant cry of fear. Her unexpected anxiety startled Covenant, but before he could ask her what was the matter, she started grimly forward again.

Some time later she repeated her performance. This time, Covenant saw that she was smelling the air as if the breeze carried an erratic scent of evil. He sniffed, but smelled nothing. “What is it?” he asked. “Are we being followed again?”

She did not look at him. “Would that Trell were here,” she breathed distractedly. “Perhaps he would know why the Land is so unquiet.” Without explanation she swung hastening away northward once more.

That evening she halted earlier than usual. Late in the afternoon, he noticed that she was looking for something, a sign of some kind in the grass and trees; but she said nothing to explain herself, and so he could do nothing but watch and follow. Then without warning she turned sharply to the right, moved into a shallow valley between two hills. They had to skirt the edge of the valley to avoid a large patch of brambles which covered most of its bottom; and in a few hundred yards they came to a wide, thick copse in the northern hill. Atiaran walked around the copse, then unexpectedly vanished into it.

Dimly wondering, Covenant went to the spot where she had disappeared. There he was able to pick out a thin sliver of a path leading into the copse. He had to turn sideways to follow this path around some of the trees, but in twenty feet he came to an open space like a chamber grown into the centre of the woods.

The space was lit by light filtering through the walls, which were formed of saplings standing closely side by side in a rude rectangle; and a faint rustling breeze blew through them. But interwoven branches and leaves made a tight roof for the chamber. It was comfortably large enough for three or four people, and along each of its walls were grassy mounds like beds. In one corner stood a larger tree with a hollow centre, into which shelves had been built, and these were laden with pots and flasks made of both wood and stone. The whole place seemed deliberately welcoming and cozy.

As Covenant looked around, Atiaran set her pack on one of the beds, and said abruptly, “This is a Waymeet.” When he turned a face full of questions toward her, she sighed and went on, “A resting place for travellers. Here is food and drink and sleep for any who pass this way.”

She moved away to inspect the contents of the shelves, and her busyness forced Covenant to hold onto his questions until a time when she might be more accessible. But while she replenished the supplies in her pack and prepared a meal, he sat and reflected that she was not ever likely to be accessible to him; and he was in no mood to be kept in ignorance. So after they had eaten, and Atiaran had settled herself for the night, he said with as much gentleness as he could manage, “Tell me more about this place. Maybe I'll need to know sometime.”

She kept her face away from him, and lay silent in the gathering darkness for a while. She seemed to be waiting for courage, and when at last she spoke, she sighed only, “Ask.”

Her delay made him abrupt. “Are there many places like this?”

“There are many throughout the Land.”

“Why? Who sets them up?”

“The Lords caused them to be made. Revelstone is only one place, and the people live in many therefore the Lords sought a way to help travellers, so that people might come to Revelstone and to each other more easily.”

“Well, who takes care of them? There's fresh food here.”

Atiaran sighed again, as if she found talking to him arduous. The night had deepened; he could see nothing of her but a shadow as she explained tiredly, “Among the Demondim-spawn that survived the Desolation, there were some who recalled Loric Vilesilencer with gratitude. They turned against the ur-viles, and asked the Lords to give them a service to perform, as expiation for the sins of their kindred. These creatures, the Waynhim, care for the Waymeets-helping the trees to grow, providing food and drink. But the bond between men and Waynhim is fragile, and you will not see one. They serve for their own reasons, not for love of us-performing simple tasks to redeem the evil of their mighty lore.”

The darkness in the chamber was now complete. In spite of his irritation, Covenant felt ready to sleep. He asked only one more question. “How did you find this place? Is there a map?”

“There is no map. A Waymeet is a blessing which one who travels accepts wherever it is found-a token of the health and hospitality of the Land. They may be found when they are needed. The Waynhim leave signs in the surrounding land.”

Covenant thought he could hear a note of appreciation in her voice which clashed with her reluctance. The sound reminded him of her constant burden of conflicts-her sense of personal weakness in the face of the Land's strong need, her desires to both punish and preserve him. But he soon forgot such things as the image of Waymeets filled his reverie. Enfolded by the smell of the fresh grass on which he lay, he swung easily into sleep.

During the night, the weather changed. The morning came glowering under heavy clouds on a ragged wind out of the north, and Covenant met it with a massive frown that seemed to weigh down his forehead. He awoke before Atiaran called him. Though he had slept soundly in the security of the Waymeet, he felt as tired as if he had spent the whole night shouting at himself.

While Atiaran was preparing breakfast, he took out Triock's knife, then scanned the shelves and found a basin for water and a small mirror. He could not locate any soap-apparently the Waynhim relied on the same fine sand which he had used in Atiaran's home. So he braced himself to shave without lather. Triock's knife felt clumsy in his right hand, and he could not shake lurid visions of slitting his throat.

To marshal his courage, he studied himself in the mirror. His hair was tousled wildly; with his stubbled beard he looked like a rude prophet. His lips were thin and tight, like the chiselled mouth of an oracle, and there was grit in his gaunt eyes. All he needed to complete the picture was a touch of frenzy. Muttering silently, All in good time, he brought the knife to his cheek.

To his surprise, the blade felt slick on his skin, and it cut his whiskers without having to be scraped over them repeatedly. In a short time, he had given himself a shave which appeared adequate, at least by contrast, and he had not damaged himself. With a sardonic nod toward his reflection, he put the blade away in his pack and began eating his breakfast.

Soon he and Atiaran were ready to leave the Waymeet. She motioned for him to precede her; he went ahead a few steps along the path, then stopped to see what she was doing. As she left the chamber, she raised her head to the leafy ceiling, and said softly, “We give thanks for the Waymeet. The giving of this gift honours us, and in accepting it we return honour to the giver. We leave in Peace.” Then she followed Covenant out of the copse.

When they reached the open valley, they found dark clouds piling over them out of the north. Tensely, Atiaran looked at the sky, smelled the sir; she seemed distraught by the coming rain. Her reaction made the boiling thunderheads appear ominous to Covenant, and when she turned sharply down the valley to resume her northward path, he hurried after her, calling out, “What's the matter?”

“Ill upon evil,” she replied. “Do you not smell it? The Land is unquiet.”

“What's wrong?”

“I do not know,” she murmured so quietly that he could barely hear her. “There is a shadow in the air. And this rain-! Ah, the Land!”

“What's wrong with rain? Don't you get rain in the spring?”

“Not from the north,” she answered over her shoulder. “The spring of the Land arises from the southwest. No, this rain comes straight from Gravin Threndor. The Cavewight Staff wrong-wielder tests his power-I feel it. We are too late.”

She stiffened her pace into the claws of the wind, and Covenant pressed on behind her. As the first raindrops struck his forehead, he asked, “Does this Staff really run the weather?”

“The Old Lords did not use it so-they had no wish to violate the Land. But who can say what such power may accomplish?”

Then the full clouts of the storm hit them. The wind scourged the rain southward as if the sky were lashing out at them, at every defenceless living thing. Soon the hillsides were drenched with ferocity. The wind rent at the trees, tore, battered the grass; it struck daylight from the hills, buried the earth in preternatural night. In moments, Atiaran and Covenant were soaked, gasping through the torrent. They kept their direction by facing the dark fury, but they could see nothing of the terrain; they staggered down rough slopes, wandered helplessly into hip-deep streams, lurched headlong through thickets; they forced against the wind as if it were the current of some stinging limbo, some abyss running from nowhere mercilessly into nowhere. Yet Atiaran lunged onward erect, with careless determination, and the fear of losing her kept Covenant lumbering at her heels.

But he was wearying rapidly. With an extra effort that made his chest ache, he caught up to Atiaran, grabbed her shoulder, shouted in her ear, “Stop! We've got to stop!”

“No!” she screamed back. “We are too late! I do not dare!”

Her voice barely reached him through the howl of the wind. She started to pull away, and he tightened his grip on her robe, yelling, “No choice! We'll kill ourselves!” The rain thrashed brutally; for an instant he almost lost his hold. He got his other arm around her, tugged her streaming face close to his. “Shelter!” he cried. “We've got to stop!”

Through the water, her face had a drowning look as she answered, “Never! No time!” With a quick thrust of her weight and a swing of her arms, she broke his grip, tripped him to the ground. Before he could recover, she snatched up his right hand and began dragging him on through the grass and mud, hauling him like an unsupportable burden against the opposition of the storm. Her pull was so desperate that she had taken him several yards before he could heave upward and get his feet under him.

As he braced himself, her hold slipped off his hand, and she fell away from him. Shouting, “By hell, we're going to stop!” he leaped after her. But she eluded his grasp, ran unevenly away from him into the spite of the storm.

He stumbled along behind her. For several long moments, he slipped and scrambled through the flailing rain after her untouchable back, furious to get his hands on her. But some inner resource galvanized her strength beyond anything he could match; soon he failed at the pace. The rain hampered him as if he were trying to run on the bottom of a breaking wave.

Then a vicious skid sent him sledding down the hill with his face full of mud. When he looked up again through the rain and dirt, Atiaran had vanished into the dark storm as if she were in terror of him, dreaded his touch.

Fighting his way to his feet, Covenant roared at the rampant clouds, “Hellfire! You can't do this to me!”

Without warning, just as his fury peaked, a huge white flash exploded beside him. He felt that a bolt of lightning had struck his left hand.

The blast threw him up the hill to his right. For uncounted moments, he lay dazed, conscious only of the power of the detonation and the flaming pain in his hand. His wedding ring seemed to be on fire. But when he recovered enough to look, he could see no mark on his fingers, and the pain faded away while he was still hunting for its source.

He shook his head, thrust himself into a sitting position. There were no signs of the blast anywhere around him. He was numbly aware that something had changed, but in his confusion he could not identify what it was. He climbed painfully to his feet. After only a moment, he spotted Atiaran lying on the hillside twenty yards ahead of him. His head felt unbalanced with bewilderment, but he moved cautiously toward her, concentrating on his equilibrium. She lay on her back, apparently unhurt, and stared at him as he approached. When he reached her, she said in wonderment, “What have you done?”

The sound of her voice helped focus his attention.

He was able to say without slurring, “Me? I didn't-nothing.”

Atiaran came slowly to her feet. Standing in front of him, she studied him gravely, uncertainly, as she said, "Something has aided us. See, the storm is less. And the wind is changed-it blows now as it should.

Gravin Threndor no longer threatens. Praise the Earth, Unbeliever, if this is not your doing."

“Of course it's not my doing,” murmured Covenant.

“I don't run the weather.” There was no asperity in his tone. He was taken aback by his failure to recognize the change in the storm for himself. Atiaran had told the simple truth. The wind had shifted and dropped considerably. The rain fell steadily, but without fury; now it was just a good, solid, spring rain.

Covenant shook his head again. He felt strangely unable to understand. But when Atiaran said gently, “Shall we go?” he heard a note of unwilling respect in her voice. She seemed to believe that he had in fact done something to the storm.

Numbly, he mumbled, “Sure,” and followed her onward again.

They walked in clean rain for the rest of the day. Covenant's sense of mental dullness persisted, and the only outside influences that penetrated him were wetness and cold. Most of the day passed without his notice in one long, drenched push against the cold. Toward evening, he had regained enough of himself to be glad when Atiaran found a Waymeet, and he checked over his body carefully for any hidden injuries while his clothes dried by the graveling. But he still felt dazed by what had happened. He could not shake the odd impression that whatever force had changed the fury of the storm had altered him also.

The next day broke clear, crisp, and glorious, and he and Atiaran left the Waymeet early in the new spring dawn. After the strain of the previous day, Covenant felt keenly alert to the joyous freshness of the air and the sparkle of dampness on the grass, the sheen on the heather and the bursting flavour of the treasure-berries. The Land around him struck him as if he had never noticed its beauty before. Its vitality seemed curiously tangible to his senses. He felt that he could see spring fructifying within the trees, the grass, the flowers, hear the excitement of the calling birds, smell the newness of the buds and the cleanliness of the air.

Then abruptly Atiaran stopped and looked about her. A grimace of distaste and concern tightened her features as she sampled the breeze. She moved her head around intently, as if she were trying to locate the source of a threat.

Covenant followed her example, and as he did so, a thrill of recognition ran through him. He could tell that there was indeed something wrong in the air, something false. It did not arise in his immediate vicinity-the scents of the trees and turf and flowers, the lush afterward of rain, were all as they should be-but it lurked behind those smells like something uneasy, out of place, unnatural in the distance. He understood instinctively that it was the odour of ill-the odour of premeditated disease.

A moment later, the breeze shifted; the odour vanished. But that ill smell had heightened his perceptions; the contrast vivified his sense of the vitality of his surroundings. With an intuitive leap, he grasped the change which had taken place within him or for him. In some way that completely amazed him, his senses had gained a new dimension. He looked at the grass, smelled its freshness-and saw its verdancy, its springing life, its fitness. Jerking his eyes to a nearby aliantha, he received an impression of potency, health, that dumbfounded him.

His thoughts reeled, groped, then suddenly clarified around the image of health. He was seeing health, smelling natural fitness and vitality, hearing the true exuberance of spring. Health was as vivid around him as if the spirit of the Land's life had become palpable, incarnate. It was as if he had stepped without warning into an altogether different universe. Even Atiaran-she was gazing at his entrancement with puzzled surprise-was manifestly healthy, though her life was complicated by uneasiness, fatigue, pain, resolution.

By hell, he mumbled. Is my leprosy this obvious to her? Then why doesn't she understand-? He turned away from her stare, hunted for some way to test both his eyes and hers. After a moment, he spotted near the top of a hill a Gilden tree that seemed to have something wrong with it. In every respect that he could identify, specify, the tree appeared normal, healthy, yet it conveyed a sense of inner rot, an unexpected pang of sorrow, to his gaze. Pointing at it, he asked Atiaran what she saw.

Soberly, she replied, “I am not one of the lillianrill, but I can see that the Gilden dies. Some blight has stricken its heart. Did you not see such things before?”

He shook his head.

“Then how does the world from which you come live?” She sounded dismayed by the prospect of a place in which health itself was invisible.

He shrugged off her question. He wanted to challenge her, find out what she saw in him. But then he remembered her saying, You are closed to me. Now he understood her comment, and the comprehension gave him a feeling of relief. The privacy of his own illness was intact, safe. He motioned her northward again, and when after a moment she started on her way, he followed her with pleasure. For a long time he forgot himself in the sight of so much healthiness.

Gradually, as the day-moved through afternoon into gloaming and the onset of night, he adjusted to seeing health behind the colours and forms which met his eyes. Twice more his nostrils had caught the elusive odour of wrongness, but he could not find it anywhere near the creek by which Atiaran chose to make camp. In its absence he thought that he would sleep peacefully.

But somehow a rosy dream of soul health and beauty became a nightmare in which spirits threw off their bodies and revealed themselves to be ugly, rotten, contemptuous. He was glad to wake up, glad even to take the risk of shaving without the aid of a mirror.

On the sixth day, the smell of wrong became persistent, and it grew stronger as Atiaran and Covenant worked their way north along the hills. A brief spring shower dampened their clothes in the middle of the morning, but it did not wash the odour from the air. That smell made Covenant uneasy, whetted his anxiety until he seemed to have a cold blade of dread poised over his heart.

Still he could not locate, specify, the odour. It keened in him behind the bouquet of the grass and the tangy bracken and the aliantha, behind the loveliness of the vital hills, like the reek of a rotting corpse just beyond the range of his nostrils.

Finally he could not endure it any longer in silence. He drew abreast of Atiaran, and asked, “Do you smell it?”

Without a glance at him, she returned heavily, “Yes, Unbeliever. I smell it. It becomes clear to me.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means that we are walking into peril. Did you not expect it?”

Thinking, Hellfire! Covenant rephrased his question. “But what does it come from? What's causing it?”

“How can I say?” she countered. “I am no oracle.”

Covenant caught himself on the edge of an angry retort. With an effort, he kept his temper. “Then what is it?”

“It is murder,” Atiaran replied flatly, and quickened her pace to pull away from him. Do not ask me to forget, her back seemed to say, and he stumped fuming after it. Cold anxiety inched closer to his heart.

By midafternoon, he felt that his perception of wrongness was sharpening at almost every step. His eyes winced up and down the hills, as though he expected at any moment to see the source of the smell. His sinuses ached from constantly tasting the odour. But there was nothing for him to perceive-nothing but Atiaran's roaming path through the dips and hollows and valleys and outcroppings of the hills-nothing but healthy trees and thickets and flowers and verdant grass, the blazonry of the Earth's spring and nothing but the intensifying threat of something ill in the air. It was a poignant threat, and he felt obscurely that the cause would be worth bewailing.

The sensation of it increased without resolution for some time. But then a sudden change in the tension of Atiaran's back warned Covenant to brace himself scant instants before she hissed at him to stop. She had just rounded the side of a hill far enough to see into the hollow beyond it. For a moment she froze, crouching slightly and peering into the hollow. Then she began running down the hill.

At once, Covenant followed. In three strides, he reached the spot where she had halted. Beyond him, in the bottom of the hollow, stood a single copse like an eyot in a broad glade. He could see nothing amiss. But his sense of smell jabbered at him urgently, and Atiaran was dashing straight toward the copse. He sprinted after her.

She stopped short just on the east side of the trees. Quivering feverishly, she glared about her with an expression of terror and hatred, as if she wanted to enter the copse and did not have the courage. Then she cried out, aghast, “Waynhim? Melenkurion! Ah, by the Seven, what evil!”

When Covenant reached her side, she was staring a silent scream at the trees. She held her hands clasped together at her mouth, and her shoulders shook.

As soon as he looked at the copse, he saw a thin path leading into it. Impulsively, he moved forward, plunged between the trees. In five steps, he was in an open space much like the other Waymeets he had seen. This chamber was round, but it had the same tree walls, branch-woven roof, beds, and shelves.

But the walls were spattered with blood, and a figure lay in the centre of the floor.

Covenant gasped as he saw that the figure was not human.

Its outlines were generally manlike, though the torso was inordinately long, and the limbs were short, matched in length, indicating that the creature could both stand erect and run on its hands and feet. But the face was entirely alien to Covenant. A long, flexible neck joined the hairless head to the body; two pointed ears perched near the top of the skull on either side'; the mouth was as thin as a mere slit in the flesh. And there were no eyes. Two gaping nostrils surrounded by a thick, fleshy membrane filled the centre of the face. The head had no other features.

Driven through the centre of the creature's chest-pinning it to the ground-was a long iron spike.

The chamber stank of violence so badly that in a few breaths Covenant felt about to suffocate. He wanted to flee. He was a leper; even dead things were dangerous to him. But he forced himself to remain still while he sorted out one impression. On seeing the creature, his first thought had been that the Land was rid of something loathsome. But as he gritted himself, his eyes and nose corrected him. The wrongness which assailed his senses came from the killing from the spike-not from the creature. Its flesh had a hue of ravaged health; it had been natural, right-a proper part of the life of the Land Gagging on the stench of the crime, Covenant turned and fled.

As he broke out into the sunlight, he saw Atiaran already moving away to the north, almost out of the hollow. He needed no urging to hurry after her; his bones ached to put as much distance as possible between himself and the desecrated Waymeet. He hastened in her direction as if there were fangs snapping at his heels.

For the rest of the day, he found relief in putting leagues behind him. The edge of the unnatural smell was slowly blunted as they hurried onward. But it did not fade below a certain level. When he and Atiaran were forced by fatigue and darkness to stop for the night, he felt sure that there was uneasiness still ahead-that the killer of the Waynhim was moving invidiously to the north of them. Atiaran seemed to share his conviction; she asked him if he knew how to use the knife he carried.

After sleep had eluded him for some time, he made himself ask her, “Shouldn't we have-buried it?”

She answered softly from her shadowed bed across the low light of the graveling, “They would not thank our interference. They will take care of their own. But the fear is on me that they may break their bond with the Lords because of this.”

That thought gave Covenant a chill he could not explain, and he lay sleepless for half the night under the cold mockery of the stars.

The next day dawned on short rations for the travellers. Atiaran had been planning to replenish her supplies at a Waymeet the previous day, so now she had no springwine left and little bread or staples. However, they were in no danger of going hungry-treasure-berries were plentiful along their path. But they had to start without warm food to steady them after the cold, uncomforting night. And they had to travel in the same direction that the killer of the Waynhim had taken. Covenant found himself stamping angrily into the dawn as if he sensed that the murder had been intended for him. For the first time in several days, he allowed himself to think of Drool and Lord Foul. He knew that either of them was capable of killing a Waynhim, even of killing it gratuitously. And the Despiser, at least, might easily know where he was.

But the day passed without mishap. The dim, constant uneasiness in the air grew no worse and aliantha abounded. As the leagues passed, Covenant's anger lost its edge. He relaxed into contemplation of the health around him, looked with undiminished wonder at the trees, the magisterial oaks and dignified elms, the comforting spread of the Gilden, the fine filigree of the mimosas, the spry saplings of wattle-and at the calm old contours of the hills, lying like slumberous heads to the reclining earth of the western plains. Such things gave him a new sense of the pulse and pause, the climbing sap and the still rock of the Land. In contrast, the trailing ordure of death seemed both petty insignificant beside the vast abundant vitality of the hills-and vile, like an act of cruelty done to a child.

The next morning, Atiaran changed her course, veering somewhat eastward, so that she and Covenant climbed more and more into the heart of the hills. They took a crooked trail, keeping primarily to valleys that wandered generally northward between the hills. And when the sun was low enough to cast the eastern hillsides into shadow, the travellers came in sight of Soaring Woodhelven.

Their approach gave Covenant a good view of the tree village from some distance away across a wide glade. He judged the tree to be nearly four hundred feet high, and a good thirty broad at the base. There were no branches on the trunk until forty or fifty feet above the ground, then abruptly huge limbs spread out horizontally from the stem, forming in outline a half-oval with a flattened tip. The whole tree was so thickly branched and leaved that most of the village was hidden; but Covenant could see a few ladders between the branches and along the trunk; and in some tight knots on the limbs he thought he could make out the shapes of dwellings. If any people were moving through the foliage, they were so well camouflaged that he could not discern them.

“That is Soaring Woodhelven,” said Atiaran, “a home for the people of the lillianrill, as Mithil Stonedown is a home for those of the rhadhamaerl. I have been here once, on my returning from the Loresraat. The Woodhelvennin are a comely folk, though I do not understand their wood-lore. They will give us rest and food, and perhaps help as well. It is said, `Go to the rhadhamaerl for truth, and the lillianrill for counsel.' My need for counsel is sore upon me. Come.”

She led Covenant across the glade to the base of the great tree. They had to pass around the rough-barked trunk to the northwest curve, and there they found a large natural opening in the hollow stem. The inner cavity was not deep; it was only large enough to hold a spiral stairway. Above the first thick limb was another opening, from which ladders began their way upward.

The sight gave Covenant a quiver of his old fear of heights, almost forgotten since his ordeal on the stairs of Kevin's Watch. He did not want to have to climb those ladders.

But it appeared that he would not have to climb. The opening to the trunk was barred with a heavy wooden gate, and there was no one to open it. In fact, the whole place seemed too quiet and dark for a human habitation. Dusk was gathering, but no home glimmers broke through the overhanging shadow, and no gloaming calls between families interrupted the silence.

Covenant glanced at Atiaran, and saw that she was puzzled. Resting her hands on the bars of the gate, she said, “This is not well, Thomas Covenant. When last I came here, there were children in the glade, people on the stair, and no gate at the door. Something is amiss. And yet I sense no great evil. There is no more ill here than elsewhere along our path.”

Stepping back from the gate, she raised her head and called, “Hail! Soaring Woodhelven! We are travellers, people of the Land! Our way is long-our future dark! What has become of you?” When no answering shout came, she went on in exasperation, “I have been here before! In those days, it was said that Woodhelvennin hospitality had no equal! Is this your friendship to the Land?”

Suddenly, they heard a light scattering fall behind them. Spinning around, they found themselves encircled by seven or eight men gripping smooth wooden daggers. Instinctively, Atiaran and Covenant backed away. As the men advanced, one of them said, “The meaning of friendship changes with the times. We have seen darkness, and heard dark tidings. We will be sure of strangers”

A torch flared in the hands of the man who had spoken. Through the glare, Covenant got his first look at the Woodhelvennin. They were all tall, slim, and lithe, with fair hair and light eyes. They dressed in cloaks of woodland colours, and the fabric seemed to cling to their limbs, as if to avoid snagging on branches. Each man held a pointed dagger of polished wood which gleamed dully in the torchlight.

Covenant was at a loss, but Atiaran gathered her robe about her and answered with stern pride, “Then be sure. I am Atiaran Trell-mate of Mithil Stonedown. This is Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and message-bearer to the Lords. We come in friendship and need, seeking safety and help. I did not know that it is your custom to make strangers prisoner.”

The man who held the torch stepped forward and bowed seriously. “When we are sure, we will ask your pardon. Until that time, you must come with me to a place where you may be examined. We have seen strange tokens, and see more now.” He nodded at Covenant. “`We would make no mistake, either in trust or in doubt. Will you accompany me?”

“Very well,” Atiaran sighed. “But you would not be treated so in Mithil Stonedown.”

The man replied, “Let the Stonedownors taste our troubles before they despise our caution. Now, come behind me.” He moved forward to open the gate.

At the command, Covenant balked. He was not prepared to go climbing around a tall tree in the dark. It would have been bad enough in the light, when he could have seen what he was doing, but the very thought of taking the risk at night made his pulse hammer in his forehead. Stepping away from Atiaran, he said with a quaver he could not repress, “Forget it.”

Before he could react, two of the men grabbed his arms. He tried to twist away, but they held him, pulled his hands up into the torchlight. For one stark moment, the Woodhelvennin stared at his hand, at the ring on his left and the scar on his right-as if he were some kind of ghoul. Then the man with the torch snapped, “Bring him.”

“No!” Covenant clamoured. “You don't understand. I'm not good at heights. I'll fall.” As they wrestled him toward the gate, he shouted, “Hellfire! You're trying to kill me!”

His captors halted momentarily. He heard a series of shouts, but in his confused, angry panic he did not understand. Then the leader said, “If you do not climb well, you will not be asked to climb.”

The next moment, the end of a rope fell beside Covenant. Instantly, two more men lashed his wrists to the line. Before he realized what was happening, the rope sprang taut. He was hauled into the air like a sack of miscellaneous helplessness.

He thought he heard a shout of protest from Atiaran, but he could not be sure. Crying silently, Bloody hell! he tensed his shoulders against the strain and stared wildly up into the darkness. He could not see anyone drawing up the rope in the last glimmering of the torch, the line seemed to stretch up into an abyss-and that made him doubly afraid.

Then the light below him vanished.

The next moment, a low rustling of leaves told him that he had reached the level of the first branches. He saw a yellow glow through the upper opening of the tree's stairwell. But the rope hauled him on upward into the heights of the village.

His own movements made him swing slightly, so that at odd intervals he brushed against the leaves.

But that was his only contact with the tree. He saw no lights, heard no voices; the deep black weights of the mighty limbs slid smoothly past him as if he were being dragged into the sky.

Soon both his shoulders throbbed sharply, and his arms went numb. With his head craned upward, he gaped into a lightless terror and moaned as if he were drowning, Hellfire! Ahh!

Then without warning his movement stopped. Before he could brace himself, a torch flared, and he found himself level with three men who were standing on a limb. In the sudden light, they looked identical to the men who had captured him, but one of them had a small circlet of leaves about his head. The other two considered Covenant for a moment, then reached out and gripped his shirt, pulling him toward their limb. As the solid branch struck his feet, the rope slackened; letting his arms drop.

His wrists were still tied together, but he tried to get a hold on one of the men, keep himself from falling off the limb. His arms were dead; he could not move them. The darkness stretched below him like a hungry beast. With a gasp, he lunged toward the men, striving to make them save him. They grappled him roughly. He refused to bear his own weight, forced them to carry and drag him down the limb until they came to a wide gap in the trunk. There the centre of the stem was hollowed out to form a large chamber, and Covenant dropped heavily to the floor, shuddering with relief.

Shortly, a rising current of activity began around him. He paid no attention to it; he kept his eyes shut to concentrate on the hard stability of the floor, and on the pain of blood returning to his hands and arms. The hurt was excruciating, but he endured it in clenched silence. Soon his hands were tingling, and his fingers felt thick, hot. He flexed them, curled them into claws. Through his teeth, he muttered to the fierce rhythm of his heart, Hellfire. Hell and blood.

He opened his eyes.

He was lying on polished wood at the centre of the myriad concentric circles of the tree trunk. The age rings made the rest of the room seem to focus toward him as if he were sprawled on a target. His arms felt unnaturally inarticulate, but he forced them to thrust him into a sitting position. Then he looked at his hands. His wrists were raw from the cut of the rope, but they were not bleeding.

Bastards!

He raised his head and glowered around him.

The chamber was about twenty feet wide, and seemed to fill the whole inside diameter of the trunk. The only opening was the one through which he had stumbled, and he could see darkness outside; but the room was brightly lit by torches set into the walls-torches which burned smokelessly, and did not appear to be consumed. The polished walls gleamed as if they were burnished, but the ceiling, high above the floor, was rough, untouched wood.

Five Woodhelvennin stood around Covenant in the hollow-three men, including the one wearing the circlet of leaves, and two women. They all were dressed in similar cloaks which clung to their outlines, though the colours varied, and all were taller than Covenant. Their tallness seemed threatening, so he got slowly to his feet, lowering the pack from his shoulders as he stood.

A moment later, the man who had led Covenant's captors on the ground entered the chamber, followed by Atiaran. She appeared unharmed, but weary and depressed, as though the climb and the distrust had sapped her strength. When she saw Covenant, she moved to take her stand beside him.

One of the women said, “Only two, Soranal?”

“Yes,” Atiaran's guard answered. “We watched, and there were no others as they crossed the south glade. And our scouts have not reported any other strangers in the hills.”

“Scouts?” asked Atiaran. “I did not know that scouts were needed among the people of the Land.”

The woman took a step forward and replied, "Atiaran Trell-mate, the folk of Mithil Stonedown have been known to us since our return to the Land in the new age. And there are those among us who remember your visit here. We know our friends, and the value of friendship."

“Then in what way have we deserved this treatment?” Atiaran demanded. “We came in search of friends.”

The woman did not answer Atiaran's question directly. “Because we are all people of the Land,” she said, “and because our peril is a peril for all, I will attempt to ease the sting of our discourtesy by explaining our actions. We in this heartwood chamber are the Heers of Soaring Woodhelven, the leaders of our people. I am Llaura daughter of Annamar. Here also”- she indicated each individual with a nod “are Omournil daughter of Mournil, Soranal son of Thiller, Padrias son of Mill, Malliner son of Veinnin, and Baradakas, Hirebrand of the lillianrill.” This last was the man wearing the circlet of leaves. "We made the decision of distrust, and will give our reasons.

“I see that you are impatient.” A taste of bitterness roughened her voice. “Well, I will not tire you with the full tale of the blighting wind which has blown over us from time to time from Gravin Threndor. I will not describe the angry storms, or show you the body of the three-winged bird that died atop our Woodhelven, or discuss the truth of the rumours of murder which have reached our ears. By the Seven! There are angry songs that should be sung-but I will not sing them now. This I will tell you: all servants of the Grey Slayer are not dead. It is our belief that a Raver has been among us.”

That name carried a pang of danger that made Covenant look rapidly about him, trying to locate the peril. For an instant, he did not comprehend. But then he noticed how Atiaran stiffened at Llaura's words-saw the jumping knot at the corner of her jaw, felt the heightened fear in her, though she said nothing-and he understood. The Woodhelvennin feared that he and she might be Ravers.

Without thinking, he snapped, “That's ridiculous.”

The Heers ignored him. After a short pause, Soranal continued Llaura's explanation. "Two days past, in the high sun of afternoon, when our people were busy at their crafts and labours, and the children were playing in the upper branches of the Tree, a stranger came to Soaring Woodhelven. Two days earlier, the last ill storm out of Mount Thunder had broken suddenly and turned into good-and on the day the stranger came our hearts were glad, thinking that a battle we knew not of had been won for the Land. He wore the appearance of a Stonedownor, and said his name was Jehannum. We welcomed him with the hospitality which is the joy of the Land. We saw no reason to doubt him, though the children shrank from him with unwonted cries and fears. Alas for us-the young saw more clearly than the old.

"He passed among us with dark hints and spite in his mouth, casting sly ridicule on our crafts and customs. And we could not answer him. But we remembered Peace, and did nothing for a day.

“In that time, Jehannum's hints turned to open foretelling of doom. So at last we called him to the heartwood chamber and the meeting of the Heers. We heard the words he chose to speak, words full of glee and the reviling of the Land. Then our eyes saw more deeply, and we offered him the test of the lomillialor.”

“You know of the High Wood, lomillialor- do you not, Atiaran?” Baradakas spoke for the first time. “There is much in it like the orcrest of the rhadhamaerl. It is an offspring of the One Tree, from which the Staff of Law itself was made.”

“But we had no chance to make the test,” Soranal resumed. “When Jehannum saw the High Wood, he sprang away from us and escaped. We gave pursuit, but he had taken us by surprise-we were too full of quiet, not ready for such evils-and his fleetness far surpassed ours. He eluded us, and made his way toward the east.”

He sighed as he concluded, “In the one day which has passed since that time, we have begun relearning the defence of the Land.”

After a moment, Atiaran said quietly, "I hear you. Pardon my anger-I spoke in haste and ignorance.

But surely now you can see that we are no friends of the Grey Slayer."

“We see much in you, Atiaran Trell-mate,” said Llaura, her eyes fixed keenly on the Stonedownor, “much sorrow and much courage. But your companion is closed to us. It may be that we will need to emprison this Thomas Covenant.”

“Melenkurion!” hissed Atiaran. “Do not dare! Do you not know? Have you not looked at him?”

At this, a murmur of relief passed among the Heers, a murmur which accented their tension. Stepping toward Atiaran, Soranal extended his right hand, palm forward, in the salute of welcome, and said, “We have looked-looked and heard. We trust you, Atiaran Trell-mate. You have spoken a name which no Raver would call upon to save a companion.” He took her by the arm and drew her away from Covenant, out of the centre of the chamber.

Without her at his shoulder, Covenant felt suddenly exposed, vulnerable. For the first time, he sensed how much he had come to depend upon her presence, her guidance, if not her support. But he was in no mood to meet threats passively. He poised himself on the balls of his feet, ready to move in any direction; and his eyes shifted quickly among, the faces that stared at him from the gleaming walls of the chamber.

“Jehannum predicted many things,” said Llaura, “but one especially you should be told. He said that a great evil in the semblance of Berek Halfhand walked the hills toward us out of the south. And here-” She pointed a pale arm at Covenant, her voice rising sternly as she spoke. “Here is an utter stranger to the Land-half unhanded on his right, and on his left bearing a ring of white gold. Beyond doubt carrying messages to the Lords-messages of doom!”

With a pleading intensity, Atiaran said, “Do not presume to judge. Remember the Oath. You are not Lords. And dark words may be warnings as well as prophecies. Will you trust the word of a Raver?”

Baradakas shrugged slightly. “It is not the message we judge. Our test is for the man.” Reaching behind him, he lifted up a smooth wooden rod three feet long from which all the bark had been stripped. He held it by the middle gently, reverently. “This is lomillialor.” As he said the name, the wood glistened as if its clear grain were moist with dew.

What the hell is this? Covenant tried to balance himself for whatever was coming.

But the Hirebrand's next move caught him by surprise. Baradakas swung his rod and lofted it toward the Unbeliever.

He jerked aside and clutched at the lomillialor with his right hand. But he did not have enough fingers to get a quick grip on it; it slipped away from him, dropped to the floor with a wooden click that seemed unnaturally loud in the hush of the chamber.

For an instant, everyone remained still, frozen while they absorbed the meaning of what they had seen. Then, in unison, the Heers uttered their verdict with all the finality of a death sentence.

“The High Wood rejects him. He is a wrong in the Land.”