Lord Foul's Bane

Eleven: The Unhomed

GRADUALLY, night stumbled as if stunned and wandering aimlessly into an overcast day-limped through the wilderland of transition as though there were no knowing where the waste of darkness ended and the ashes of light began. The low clouds seemed full of grief-tense and uneasy with accumulated woe-and yet affectless, unable to rain, as if the air clenched itself too hard for tears. And through the dawn, Atiaran and Covenant moved heavily, unevenly, like pieces of a broken lament.

The coming of one day made no difference to them, did not alter the way they fled-terrorless because their capacity for fear was exhausted-into the north. Day and night were nothing but disguises, motley raiment, for the constant shadow on the Land's heart. To that heart they could not guess how much damage had been done. They could only judge by their own hurt-and so throughout the long, dismal night and day which followed the defilement of the Celebration, they walked on haunted by what they had witnessed and numb to everything else, as though even hunger and thirst and fatigue were extinguished in them.

That night, their flesh reached the end of its endurance, and they pitched blindly into sleep, no longer able to care what pursuit was on their trail. While they slept, the sky found some release for its tension. Blue lightning flailed the Hills; thunder groaned in long suppressed pain. When the travellers awoke, the sun stood over them, and their clothes were drenched with the night's rain. But sunshine and morning could not unscar their wounded memories. They clambered like corpses to their feet-ate aliantha, drank from a stream-set off again walking as if they were stiff with death.

Yet time and aliantha and Andelainian air slowly worked their resuscitations. Slowly, Covenant's weary thoughts shifted; the trudging horror of slaughter receded, allowed a more familiar pain to ache in him. He could hear Atiaran crying, Covenant, help them! and the sound made his blood ran cold with impotence.

The Wraiths, the Wraiths! he moaned dimly, distantly, to himself. They had been so beautiful-and he had been so unable to save them.

Yet Atiaran had believed him capable of saving them; she had expected some putting forth of power-Like Lena and Baradakas and everyone else he met, she saw him as Berek Halfhand reborn, the master of wild magic. You have might, the Despiser had said. You will never know what it is. He did not know; how could he? What did magic, or even dreams, have to do with him?

And yet the Wraiths had paid homage to his ring as if they recognized his lost humanity. They had been changed by it.

After a time, he said without meaning to speak aloud, “I would have saved them if I could.”

“You have the power.” Atiaran's voice was dull, inert, as if she were no longer capable of grief or anger.

“What power?” he asked painfully.

“Do you wear the white gold for nothing?”

“It's just a ring. I wear it-I wear it because I'm a leper. I don't know anything about power.”

She did not look at him. “I cannot see. You are closed to me.”

At that, he wanted to protest, cry out, grab her by the shoulders and shout into her face, Closed? Look-look at me! I'm no Berek! No hero. I'm too sick for that. But he lacked the strength. And he had been too badly hurt-hurt as much by Atiaran's impossible demand as by his powerlessness.

How-?

The Wraiths!

How can this happen to me?

A moment passed while he groaned over the question. Then he sighed to himself, I should have known-He should have heard his danger in Atiaran's singing of the Berek legend, seen it in Andelain, felt it in the revulsion in his boots. But he had been deaf, blind, numb. He had been so busy moving ahead, putting madness behind him, that he had ignored the madness toward which the path of his dream tended. This dream wanted him to be a hero, a saviour; therefore it seduced him, swept him along-urging him forward so that he would run heedless of himself to risk his life for the sake of Wraiths, the Land, illusion. The only difference in this between Atiaran and Lord Foul was that the Despiser wanted him to fail.

You will never know what it is. Of course he would never know. A visceral anger writhed under his fatigue. He was dreaming-that was the answer to everything, to the Land's impossible expectations of him as well as to the Land's impossibility. He knew the difference between reality and dream; he was sane.

He was a leper.

And yet the Wraiths had been so beautiful. They had been slaughtered

I'm a leper!

Trembling, he began to give himself a VSE. Hellfire! What do Wraiths and wild magic and Berek bloody Halfhand have to do with me? His body appeared whole-he could see no injuries, his clothing was rumpled but unrent-but the end of the Hirebrand's staff had been blackened by the power of the ur-viles. By hell! They can't do this to me.

Fuming against his weariness, he shambled along at Atiaran's side. She did not look at him, did not seem to recognize his presence at all; and during that day he left her alone as if he feared how he would respond if he gave her an opportunity to accuse him. But when they halted that evening, the cold night and the brittle stars made him regret the loss of their blankets and graveling. To distract himself from his hollow discomfort, he resumed his half-forgotten efforts to learn about the Land. Stiffly, he said, “Tell me about that-whoever saved us. Back there.”

A long silence passed before she said, “Tomorrow.” Her voice was lightless, unillumined by anything expect torpor or defeat. “Let me be. Until tomorrow.”

Covenant nodded in the darkness. It felt thick with cold and beating wings, but he could answer it better than he could reply to Atiaran's tone. For a long time he shivered as if he were prepared to resent every dream that afflicted a miserable mankind, and at last he fell into fitful slumber.

The next day, the ninth from Soaring Woodhelven, Atiaran told Covenant about the Unfettered One in a voice as flat as crushed rock, as if she had reached the point where what she said, how she exposed herself, no longer mattered to her. “There are those from the Loresraat,” she said, "who find that they cannot work for the Land or the Lore of the Old Lords in the company of their fellows-Lords or Lorewardens, the followers of Sword or Staff. Those have some private vision which compels them to seek it in isolation. But their need for aloneness does not divide them from the people. They are given the Rites of Unfettering, and freed from all common demands, to quest after their own lore with the blessing of the Lords and the respect of all who love the Land. For the Lords learned long ago that the desire for aloneness need not be a selfish desire, if it is not made so by those who do not feel it.

"Many of the Unfettered have never returned into knowledge. But stories have grown up around those Ones who have not vanished utterly. Some are said to know the secrets of dreams, others to practice deep mysteries in the arts of healing, still others to be the friends of the animals, speaking their language and calling on their help in times of great need.

“Such a One saved us”- her voice thickened momentarily- “a learner of the Wraiths and a friend to the small beasts of the woods. He knew more of the Seven Words than my ears have ever heard.” She groaned softly. “A mighty man, to have been so slain. He released the Wraiths, and saved our lives. Would that I were worth so much. By the Seven! No evil has ever before been aimed at the Wraiths of Andelain. The Grey Slayer himself never dared-And it is said that the Ritual of Desecration itself had no power to touch them. Now it is in my heart that they will not dance again.”

After a heavy pause, she went on: “No matter. All things end, in perversion and death. Sorrow belongs to those who also hope. But that Unfettered One gave his life so that you and your message and your ring might reach the Lords. This we will accomplish, so that such sacrifices may have meaning.”

She fell silent again for a moment, and Covenant asked himself, Is that why? Is that what living is for? To vindicate the deaths of others? But he said nothing, and shortly Atiaran's thoughts limped back to her subject. “But the Unfettered. Some are dreamers, some healers, some share the life of the animals. Some delve the earth to uncover the secrets of the Cavewights, others learn the lore of the Demondim whatever knowledge guides the One's private prophecy. I have even heard it whispered that some Unfettered follow the legend of Caerroil Wildwood of Garroting Deep, and become Forestals. But that is a perilous thought, even when whispered.

“Never before have I seen one of the Unfettered. But I have heard the Rites of Unfettering. A hymn is sung.” Dully, she recited:

Free

Unfettered

Shriven

Free—

Dream that what is dreamed will be:

Hold eyes clasped shut until they see,

And sing the silent prophecy

And be

Unfettered

Shriven

Free.

There is more, but my weakness will not recall-It may be that I will not sing any song again." She pulled her robe tight around her shoulders as if a wind were chilling through her, and said nothing more for the rest of the day.

That night, when they had camped, Covenant again could not sleep. Unwillingly he lay awake and watched for the sliver of the new moon. When it finally rose over the Hills, he was appalled to see that it was no longer silver-white, but red-the colour of blood and Drool's laval eyes.

It hued the Hills with wrongness, gave the night a tinge of crimson like blood sweat sheening the shrubs and trees and grass and slopes, as if the whole of Andelain were in torment. Under it, the violated ground shimmered as if it were shuddering.

Covenant stared at it, could not close his eyes. Though he badly wanted company, he clamped his teeth together, refused to awaken Atiaran. Alone and shivering, with the staff of Baradakas clutched in his sweating hands, he sat up until moonset, then slept on the edge of consternation until dawn.

And on the fourth day after the night of the Dance, it was he who set the pace of their travelling. He pushed their speed more and more as the day passed, as though he feared that the bloody moon were gaining on them.

When they halted for the night, he gave Atiaran his staff and made her sit awake to see the moon. It came over the horizon in a crimson haze, rising like a sickle of blood in the heavens. Its crescent was noticeably fuller than it had been the previous night. She stared at it rigidly, clenched the staff, but did not cry out. When she had tasted all its wrong, she said tonelessly, “There is no time,” and turned her face away.

But when morning came, she once more took charge of their pace. Under the pall of the despoiled moon she seemed to-have reached a resolution, and now she drove herself forward as if she were spurred by some self curse or flagellation which rejected through naked determination the logic of defeat. She seemed to believe that she had lost everything for herself and for the Land, yet the way she walked showed that pain could be as sharp a goad as any. Again Covenant found himself hurrying as hard as he could to keep up with her fierce back.

He accepted her pace in the name of his complex dread; he did not want to be caught by the forces that could attack Wraiths and render moons incarnadine. But he was scrupulous about his VSE and other self protections. If he could have found a blade other than his penknife, he would have shaved with it.

They spent that day, part of the night, and the morning of the next day stumbling forward on the verge of a run. Covenant sustained their rate as best he could, but long days and restless nights had drained his stamina, made his stride ragged and his muscles irresilient. He came to lean more and more on his staff, unable to keep his balance without it. And even with it he might have fallen if he had been pursuing such a pace in some other region. But the keen essence of Andelain supported him. Healthy air salved his lungs, thick grass cushioned his sore joints, Gilden shaded him, treasure-berries burst with energy in his mouth. And at last, near noon on the sixth day, he and Atiaran staggered over the crest of a hill and saw at the bottom of the slope beyond them the Soulsease River.

Blue under the azure sky, it meandered broad, quiet and slow almost directly eastward across their path like a demarcation or boundary of achievement. As it turned and ran among the Hills, it had a glitter of youth, a sparkle of contained exuberance which could burst into laughter the moment it was tickled by any shoals. And its water was as clean, clear and fresh as an offer of baptism. At the sight of it, Covenant felt a rushing desire to plunge in, as if the stream had the power to wash away his mortality.

But he was distracted from it almost immediately.

Some distance away to the west, and moving upstream in the centre of the river, was a boat like a skiff with a tall figure in the stern. The instant she saw it, Atiaran cried out sharply, waved her arms, then began pelting down the slope, calling with a frantic edge to her voice, “Hail! Help! Come back! Come back!”

Covenant followed less urgently. His gaze was fixed on the boat.

With a swing of its prow, it turned in their direction.

Atiaran threw her arms into the air again, gave one more call, then dropped to the ground. When Covenant reached her, she was sitting with her knees clasped to her chest, and her lips trembled as if her face were about to break. She stared feverishly at the approaching boat.

As it drew nearer, Covenant began to see with growing surprise just how tall the steering figure was. Before the boat was within a hundred feet of them, he was sure that the steersman was twice his own height. And he could see no means of propulsion. The craft appeared to be nothing more than an enormous rowboat, but there were no oarlocks, no oars, no poles. He gaped widely at the boat as it glided closer.

When it was within thirty feet of them, Atiaran thrust herself to her feet and called out, “Hail, Rockbrother! The Giants of Seareach are another name for friendship! Help us!” The boat kept gliding toward the bank, but its steersman did not speak; and shortly Atiaran added in a whisper that only Covenant could hear, “I beg you.”

The Giant kept his silence as he approached. For the last distance, he swung the tiller over so that the boat's prow aimed squarely at the riverbank. Then, just before the craft struck, he drove his weight down in the stern. The prow lifted out of the water and grounded itself securely a few yards from Atiaran and Covenant. In a moment, the Giant stood before them on the grass, offering them the salute of welcome.

Covenant shook his head in wonder. He felt that it was impossible for anyone to be so big; the Giant was at least twelve feet tall. But the rocky concreteness of the Giant's presence contradicted him. The Giant struck his perceptions as tangibly as stumbling on rough stone.

Even for a being twelve feet tall, he appeared gnarled with muscles, like an oak come to life. He was dressed in a heavy leather jerkin and leggings, and carried no weapons. A short beard, as stiff as iron, jutted from his face. And his eyes were small, deep-set and enthusiastic. From under his brows, massed over his sockets like the wall of a fortress, his glances flashed piercingly, like gleams from his cavernous thoughts. Yet, in spite of his imposing appearance, he gave an impression of incongruous geniality, of immense good humour.

“Hail, Rocksister,” he said in a soft, bubbling tenor voice which sounded too light and gentle to come from his bemuscled throat. “What is your need? My help is willing, but I am a legate, and my embassy brooks little delay.”

Covenant expected Atiaran to blurt out her plea; the hesitation with which she met the Giant's offer disturbed him. For a long moment, she gnawed her lips as if she were chewing over her rebellious flesh, searching for an utterance which would give direction, one way or another, to a choice she hated. Then, with her eyes downcast as if in shame, she murmured uncertainly, “Where do you go?”

At her question, the Giant's eyes flashed, and his voice bubbled like a spring of water from a rock as he said, “My destination? Who is wise enough to know his own goal? But I am bound for-No, that name is too long a story for such a time as this. I go to Lord's Keep, as you humans call it.”

Still hesitating, Atiaran asked, “What is your name?”

“That is another long story,” the Giant returned, and repeated, “What is your need?”

But Atiaran insisted dully, “Your name.”

Again a gleam sprang from under the Giant's massive brows. “There is power in names. I do not wish to be invoked by any but friends.”

“Your name!” Atiaran groaned.

For an instant, the Giant paused, indecisive. Then he said, “Very well. Though my embassy is not a light one, I will answer for the sake of the loyalty between my people and yours. To speak shortly, I am called Saltheart Foamfollower.”

Abruptly, some resistance, some hatred of her decision, crumbled in Atiaran as if it had been defeated at last by the Giant's trust. She raised her head, showing Covenant and Foamfollower the crushed landscape behind her eyes. With grave deliberation, she gave the salute of welcome. “Let it be so. Saltheart Foamfollower, Rockbrother and Giants' legate, I charge you by the power of your name, and by the great Keep of faith which was made between Damelon Giantfriend and your people, to take this man, Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and stranger to the Land, in safety to the Council of Lords. He bears messages to the Council from Kevin's Watch. Ward him well, Rockbrother. I can go no farther.”

What? Covenant gaped. In his surprise, he almost protested aloud, And give up your revenge? But he held himself still with his thoughts reeling, and waited for her to take a stance he could comprehend.

“Ah, you are too quick to call on such bold names,” the Giant said softly. “I would have accepted your charge without them. But I urge you to join us. There are rare healings at Lord's Keep. Will you not come? Those who await you would not begrudge such a sojourn-not if they could see you as I do now.”

Bitterness twisted Atiaran's lips. “Have you seen the new moon? That comes of the last healing I looked for.” As she went on, her voice grew grey with self-despite. “It is a futile charge I give you. I have already caused it to fail. There has been murder in all my choices since I became this man's guide, such murder-” She choked on the bile of what she had seen, and had to swallow violently before she could continue. “Because my path took us too close to Mount Thunder. You passed around that place. You must have seen the evil working there.”

Distantly, the Giant said, “I saw.”

"We went into the knowledge of that wrong, rather than make our way across the Centre Plains. And now it is too late for anyone. He-The Grey Slayer has returned. I chose that path because I desired healing for myself. What will happen to the Lords if I ask them to help me now?"

And give up your revenge? Covenant wondered. He could not comprehend. He turned completely toward her and studied her face, trying to see her health, her spirit.

She looked as if she were in the grip of a ravaging illness. Her mien had thinned and sharpened; her spacious eyes were shadowed, veiled in darkness; her lips were drained of blood. And vertically down the centre of her forehead lay a deep line like a rift in her skull-the tool work of unblinkable despair. Etched there was the vastness of the personal hurt which she contained by sheer force of will, and the damage she did herself by containing it.

At last Covenant saw clearly the moral struggle that wasted her, the triple conflict between her abhorrence of him, her fear for the Land, and her dismay at her own weakness-a struggle whose expense exhausted her resources, reduced her to penury. The sight shamed his heart, made him drop his gaze. Without thinking, he reached toward her and said-in a voice full of self-contradicting pleas, “Don't give up.”

“Give up?” she gasped in virulence, backing away from him. “If I gave up, I would stab you where you stand!” Suddenly, she thrust a hand into her robe and snatched out a stone knife like the one Covenant had lost. Brandishing it, she spat, “Since the Celebration since you permitted Wraiths to die-this blade has cried out for your blood: Other crimes I could set aside. I speak for my own. But that-! To countenance such desecration-!”

She hurled the knife savagely to the ground, so that it stuck hilt-deep in the turf by Covenant's feet. “Behold!” she cried, and in that instant her voice became abruptly gelid, calm. "I wound the Earth instead of you. It is fitting. I have done little else since you entered the Land.

“Now hear my last word, Unbeliever. I let you go because these decisions surpass me. Delivering children in the Stonedown does not fit me for such choices. But I will not intrude my desires on the one hope of the Land barren as that hope is. Remember that I have withheld my hand-I have kept my Oath.”

“Have you?” he asked, moved by a complex impulse of sympathy and nameless ire.

She pointed a trembling finger at her knife. “I have not harmed you. I have brought you here.”

“You've hurt yourself.”

“That is my Oath,” she breathed stiffly. “Now, farewell. When you have returned in safety to your own world, remember what evil is.”

He wanted to protest, argue, but her emotion mastered him, and he held himself silent before the force of her resolve. Under the duress of her eyes, he bent, and drew her knife out of the grass. It came up easily. He half expected to see blood ooze from the slash it had made in the turf, but the thick grass closed over the cut, hiding it as completely as an absolution. Unconsciously, he tested the blade with his thumb, felt its acuteness.

When he looked up again, he saw that Atiaran was climbing up the hill and away, moving with the unequal stride of a cripple.

This isn't right! he shouted at her back. Have mercy! — pity! But his tongue felt too thick with the pain of her renunciation; he could not speak. At least forgive yourself. The tightness of his face gave him a nasty impression that he was grinning. Atiaran! he groaned. Why are we so unable?

Into his aching, the Giant's voice came gently. “Shall we go?”

Dumbly, Covenant nodded. He tore his eyes from Atiaran's toiling back, and shoved her knife under his belt.

Saltheart Foamfollower motioned for him to climb into the boat. When Covenant had vaulted over the gunwale and taken a seat on a thwart in the prow the only seat in the thirty-foot craft small enough for him-the Giant stepped aboard, pushing off from the bank at the same time. Then he went to the broad, shallow stern. Standing there, he grasped the tiller. A surge of power flowed through the keel. He swung his craft away from the riverbank into midstream, and shortly it was moving westward among the Hills.

As soon as he had taken his seat, Covenant had turned with failure in his throat to watch Atiaran's progress up the hillside. But the surge of power which moved the boat gave it a brisk pace as fast as running, and in moments distance had reduced her to a brown mite in the lush, oblivious green of Andelain. With a harsh effort, he forced his eyes to let her go, compelled himself to look instead for the source of the boat's power.

But he could locate no power source. The boat ran smoothly up against the current as if it were being towed by fish. It had no propulsion that he could discern. Yet his nerves were sensitive to the energy flowing through the keel. Dimly, he asked, “What makes this thing move? I don't see any engine.”

Foamfollower stood in the stern, facing upstream, with the high tiller under his left arm and his right held up to the river breezes; and he was chanting something, some plainsong,in a language Covenant could not understand-a song with a wave-breaking, salty timbre like the taste of the sea. For a moment after Covenant's question, he kept up his rolling chant. But soon its language changed, and Covenant heard him sing:

Stone and Sea are deep in life,

two unalterable symbols of the world:

permanence at rest, and permanence in motion;

participants in the Power that remains.

Then Foamfollower stopped, and looked down at Covenant with humour sparkling under his unbreachable brows. “A stranger to the Land,” he said. “Did that woman teach you nothing?”

Covenant stiffened in his seat. The Giant's tone seemed to demean Atiaran, denigrate the cost she had borne; his bland, impregnable forehead and humorous glance appeared impervious to sympathy. But her pain was vivid to Covenant. She had been dispossessed of so much normal human love and warmth. In a voice rigid with anger, he retorted, “She is Atiaran Trell-mate, of Mithil Stonedown, and she did better than teach me. She brought me safely past Ravers, murdered Waynhim, a bloody moon, ur-viles, Could you have done it?”

Foamfollower did not reply, but a grin spread gaily over his face, raising the end of his beard like a mock salute.

“By hell!” Covenant flared. “Do you think I'm lying? I wouldn't condescend to lie to you.”

At that, the Giant's humour burst into high, head back, bubbling laughter.

Covenant watched, stifling with rage, while Foamfollower laughed. Briefly, he bore the affront. Then he jumped from his seat and raised his staff to strike the Giant.

Foamfollower stopped him with a placating gesture. “Softly, Unbeliever,” he said. “Will you feel taller if I sit down?”

“Hell and blood!” Covenant howled. Swinging his arms savagely, he struck the floorboards with the ur-vile blackened end of his staff.

The boat pitched as if his blow had sent the river into convulsions. Staggering, he clutched a thwart to save himself from being thrown overboard. In a moment, the spasm passed, leaving the sun-glittered stream as calm as before. But he remained gripping the thwart for several long heartbeats, while his nerves jangled and his ring throbbed heavily.

Covenant, he snarled to steady himself, you would be ridiculous if you weren't so-ridiculous. He drew himself erect, and stood with his feet braced until he had a stranglehold on his emotions. Then he bent his gaze toward Foamfollower, probed the Giant's aura. But he could perceive no ill; Foamfollower seemed as hale as native granite. Ridiculous! Covenant repeated. “She deserves respect.”

“Ah, forgive me,” said the Giant. With a twist, he lowered the tiller so that he could hold it under his arm in a sitting position. "I meant no disrespect. Your loyalty relieves me. And I know how to value what she has achieved.” He seated himself in the stern and leaned back against the tiller so that his eyes were only a foot above Covenant's. “Yes, and how to grieve for her as well. There are none in the Land, not men or Giants or Ranyhyn, who would bear you to-to Lord's Keep faster than I will."

Then his smile returned. “But you, Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and stranger in the Land-you burn yourself too freely. I laughed when I saw you because you seemed like a rooster threatening one of the Ranyhyn. You waste yourself, Thomas Covenant.”

Covenant took a double grip on his anger, and said quietly, “Is that a fact? You judge too quickly, Giant.”

Another fountain of laughter bubbled out of Foamfollower's chest. “Bravely said! Here is a new thing in the Land-a man accusing a Giant of haste. Well, you are right. But did you not know that men consider us a”- he laughed again- “a deliberate people? I was chosen as legate because short human names, which bereave their bearers of so much history and power and meaning, are easier for me than for most of my people. But now it appears that they are too easy.” Once more he threw back his head and let out a stream of deep gaiety.

Covenant glared at the Giant as if all this humour were incomprehensible to him. Then with an effort he pulled himself away, dropped his staff into the bottom of the boat, and sat down on the thwart facing forward, into the west and the afternoon sun. Foamfollower's laughter had a contagious sound, a coloration of uncomplicated joy, but he resisted it. He could not afford to be the victim of any more seductions. Already he had lost more of himself than he could hope to regain.

Nerves don't regenerate. He tolled the words as if they were a private litany, icons of his embattled self. Giants don't exist. I know the difference.

Keep moving, survive.

He chewed his lips as if that pain could help him keep his balance, keep his rage under command.

At his back, Saltheart Foamfollower softly began to chant again. His song rolled through its channel like a long inlet to the sea, rising and falling like a condensation of the tides, and the winds of distance blew through the archaic words. At intervals, they returned to their refrain-

Stone and Sea are deep in life-

then voyaged away again. The sound of long sojourning reminded Covenant of his fatigue, and he slumped in the prow to rest.

Foamfollower's question caught him wandering. “Are you a storyteller, Thomas Covenant?”

Absently, he replied, “I was, once.”

“And you gave it up? Ah, that is as sad a tale in three words as any you might have told me. But a life without a tale is like a sea without salt. How do you live?”

Covenant folded his arms across the gunwales and rested his chin on them. As the boat moved, Andelain opened constantly in front of him like a bud; but he ignored it, concentrated instead on the plaint of water past the prow. Unconsciously, he clenched his fist over his ring. “I live.”

“Another?” Foamfollower returned. “In two words, a story sadder than the first. Say no more-with one word you will make me weep.”

If the Giant intended any umbrage, Covenant could not hear it. Foamfollower sounded half teasing, half sympathetic. Covenant shrugged his shoulders, and remained silent.

In a moment, the Giant went on: "Well, this is a bad pass for me. Our journeying will not be easy, and I had hoped that you could lighten the leagues with a story. But no matter. I judge that you will tell no happy tales in any case. Ravers. Waynhim and Andelainian Wraiths slain. Well, some of this does not surprise me-our old ones have often guessed that Soulcrusher would not die as easily as poor Kevin hoped. Stone and Sea! All that Desecration-ravage and rapine-for a false hope. But we have a saying, and it comforts our children-few as they are-when they weep for the nation, the homes, and company of our people, which we lost-we say, Joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that speaks. The world has few stories glad in themselves, and we must have gay ears to defy Despite. Praise the Creator! Old Lord Damelon Giantfriend knew the value of a good laugh. When we reached the Land, we were too grieved to fight for the right to live."

A good laugh, Covenant sighed morosely. Did I do a whole life's laughing in that little time?

“You humans are an impatient lot, Thomas Covenant. Do you think that I ramble? Not a bit-I have come hastening to the point. Since you have given up the telling of stories, and since it appears that neither of us is happy enough to withstand the recital of your adventures-why, I must do the telling myself. There is strength in stories-heart rebirth and thew binding-and even Giants need strength when they face such tasks as mine.” He paused, and Covenant, not wishing him to stop-the Giant's voice seemed to weave the rush of water past the boat into a soothing tapestry-said into the silence, “Tell."

“Ah,” Foamfollower responded, “that was not so bad. You recover despite yourself, Thomas Covenant. Now, then. Gladden your ears, and listen gaily, for I am no purveyor of sorrows-though in times of action we do not wince from facts. If you asked me to resail your path here, I would require every detail of your journey before I took three steps into the Hills. Resailing is perilous, and too often return is impossible the path is lost, or the traveller changed, beyond hope of recovery.

“But you must understand, Unbeliever, that selecting a tale is usually a matter for deliberation. The old Giantish is a wealth of stories, and some take days in the telling. Once, as a child, I heard three times in succession the tale of Bahgoon the Unbearable and Thelma Twofist, who tamed him-now that was a story worth the laughter-but nine days were gone before I knew it. However, you do not speak Giantish, and translation is a long task, even for Giants, so the problem of selection is simplified. But the lore of our life in Seareach since our ships found the Land contains many times many stories-tales of the reigns of Damelon Giantfriend and Loric Vilesilencer and Kevin, who is now called Landwaster-tales of the building, the carving out of the mountain, of Revelstone, revered rock, “a handmark of allegiance and fealty in the eternal stone of time,” as Kevin once sang it, the mightiest making that the Giants have done in the Land, a temple for our people to look upon and remember what can be achieved-tales of the voyage which saved us from the Desecration, and of the many healings of the new Lords. But again selection is made easy because you are a stranger. I will tell you the first story of the Seareach Giants the Song of the Unhomed.”

Covenant looked about him at the shining blue tranquillity of the Soulsease, and settled himself to hear Foamfollower's story. But the narration did not begin right away. Instead of starting his tale, the Giant went back to his antique plainsong, spinning the melody meditatively so that it unrolled like the sea path of the river. For a long time, he sang, and under the spell of his voice Covenant began to drowse. He had too much exhaustion dripping through his bones to keep his attention ready. While he waited, he rested against the prow like a tired swimmer.

But then a modulation sharpened the Giant's chant. The melody took on keener edges, and turned itself to the angle of a lament. Soon Foamfollower was singing words that Covenant could understand.

We are the Unhomed—

lost voyagers of the world.

In the land beyond the Sunbirth Sea

we lived and had our homes and grew—

and set our sails to the wind,

unheeding of the peril of the lost.

We are the Unhomed.

From home and hearth,

stone sacred dwellings crafted by our reverent hands,

we set our sails to the wind of the stars,

and carried life to lands across the earth,

careless of the peril of our loss.

We are the Unhomed—

lost voyagers of the world.

From desert shore to high cliff crag,

home of men and sylvan sea-edge faery lands—

from dream to dream we set our sails,

and smiled at the rainbow of our loss.

Now we are Unhomed,

bereft of root and kith and kin.

From other mysteries of delight,

we set our sails to resail our track;

but the winds of life blew not the way we chose,

and the land beyond the Sea was lost.

“Ah, Stone and Sea! Do you know the old lore legend of the Wounded Rainbow, Thomas Covenant? It is said that in the dimmest past of the Earth, there were no stars in our sky. The heavens were a blankness which separated us from the eternal universe of the Creator. There he lived with his people and his myriad bright children, and they moved to the music of play and joy.

“Now, as the ages spired from forever to forever, the Creator was moved to make a new thing for the happy hearts of his children. He descended to the great forges and cauldrons of his power, and brewed and hammered and cast rare theurgies. And when he was done, he turned to the heavens, and threw his mystic creation to the sky-and, behold! A rainbow spread its arms across the universe.

“For a moment, the Creator was glad. But then he looked closely at the rainbow-and there, high in the shimmering span, he saw a wound, a breach in the beauty he had made. He did not know that his Enemy, the demon spirit of murk and mire that crawled through the bowels of even his universe, had seen him at work, and had cast spite into the mortar of his creating. So now, as the rainbow stood across the heavens, it was marred.

“In vexation, the Creator returned to his works, to find a cure for his creation. But while he laboured, his children, his myriad bright children, found the rainbow, and were filled with rejoicing at its beauty. Together, they climbed into the heavens and scampered happily up the bow, dancing gay dances across its colours. High on the span, they discovered the wound. But they did not understand it. Chorusing joy, they danced through the wound, and found themselves in our sky. This new unlighted world only gladdened them the more, and they spun through the sky until it sparkled with the glee of play.

“When they tired of this sport, they sought to return to their universe of light. But their door was shut. For the Creator had discovered his Enemy's handiwork-the cause of the wound-and in his anger his mind had been clouded. Thoughtless, he had torn the rainbow from the heavens. Not until his anger was done did he realize that he had trapped his children in our sky. And there they remain, stars to guide the sojourners of our nights, until the Creator can rid his universe of his Enemy, and find a way to bring his children Home.

“So it was with us, the Unhomed. In our long-lost rocky land, we lived and flourished among our own kind, and when we learned to travel the seas we only prospered the more. But in the eagerness of our glee and our health and our wandering, we betrayed ourselves into folly. We built twenty fine ships, each large enough to be a castle for you humans, and we made a vow among ourselves to set sail and discover the whole Earth. Ah, the whole Earth! In twenty ships, two thousand Giants said high farewells to their kindred, promising to bring back in stories every face of the multitudinous world-and they launched themselves into their dream.

“Then from sea to sea, through tempest and calm, drought and famine and plenty, between reef and landfall, the Giants sailed, glorying in the bite of the salt air, and the stretch of sailors' thews, and the perpetual contest with the ocean, “permanence in motion”- and in the exaltation of binding together new peoples in the web of their wandering.

“Three ships they lost in half a generation. One hundred Giants chose to remain and live out their lot with the sylvan faery Elohim. Two hundred died in the war service of the Bhrathair, who were nearly destroyed by the Sand gorgons of the great Desert. Two ships were reefed and wrecked. And when the first children born on the voyage were old enough to be sailors themselves, the fifteen vessels held council, and turned their thoughts toward Home-for they had learned the folly of their vow, and were worn from wrestling with the seas.

“So they set their sails by the stars, and sought for Home. But they were prevented. Familiar paths led them to unknown oceans and unencountered perils. Tempests drove them beyond their reckoning until their hands were stripped to the bone by the flailing ropes, and the waves rose up against them as if in hatred. Five more ships were lost-though the wreckage of one was found, and the sailors of another were rescued from the island on which they had been cast. Through ice that held them in its clutch for many seasons, killing scores of them-through calms that made them close comrades of starvation-they endured, struggling for their lives and Home. But disasters erased every vestige of knowledge from their bearings, until they knew not where they were or where to go. When they reached the Land, they cast their anchors. Less than a thousand Giants stepped down to the rocky shore of Seareach. In disconsolation, they gave up their hope of Home.

“But the friendship of High Lord Damelon Heartthew-son renewed them. He saw omens of promise in his mighty Lore, and at his word the Giants lifted up their hearts. They made Seareach their place, and swore fealty to the Lords-and sent three vessels out in quest of Home. Since that time-for more than three times a thousand years-there have always been three Giant ships at sea, seeking our land turn by turn, three new standing out when the old return, their hands empty of success. Still we are Unhomed, lost in the labyrinth of a foolish dream.

“Stone and Sea! We are a long-lived people, compared to your humans-I was born on shipboard during the short voyage which saved us from the Desecration, and my great-grandparents were among the first wanderers. And we have so few children. Rarely does any woman bear more than one child. So now there are only five hundred of us, and our vitality narrows with each generation.

“We cannot forget.”

“But in the old lore-legend, the children of the Creator had hope. He put rainbows in our sky after cleansing rains, as a promise to the stars that somehow, someday, he would find a way to bring them home.

“If we are to survive, we must find the Home that we have lost, the heartland beyond the Sunbirth Sea.”

During Foamfollower's tale the sun had declined into late afternoon; and as he finished, sunset began on the horizon. Then the Soulsease ran out of the west with fiery, orange-gold glory reflected flame for flame in its burnished countenance. In the fathomless heavens the fire radiated both loss and prophecy, coming night and promised day, darkness which would pass; for when the true end of day and light came, there would be no blazonry to make it admirable, no spectacle or fine fire or joy, nothing for the heart to behold but decay and grey ashes.

In splendour, Foamfollower lifted up his voice again, and sang with a plummeting ache:

We set our sails to resail our track;

but the winds of life blew not the way we chose,

and the land beyond the Sea was lost.

Covenant pushed himself around to look at the Giant. Foamfollower's head was held high, with wet streaks of gleaming gold-orange fire drawn delicately down his cheeks. As Covenant watched, the reflected light took on a reddish shade and began to fade.

Softly, the Giant said, “Laugh, Thomas Covenant laugh for me. Joy is in the ears that hear.”

Covenant heard the subdued, undemanding throb and supplication in Foamfollower's voice, and his own choked pain groaned in answer. But he could not laugh; he had no laughter of any kind in him. With a spasm of disgust for the limitations that crippled him, he made a rough effort in another direction. “I'm hungry.”

For an instant, Foamfollower's shadowed eyes flared as if he had been stung. But then he put back his head and laughed for himself. His humour seemed to spring straight from his heart, and soon it had banished all tension and tears from his visage.

When he had relaxed into quiet chuckling, he said, "Thomas Covenant, I do not like to be hasty-but I believe you are my friend. You have toppled my pride, and that would be fair service even had I not laughed at you earlier.

“Hungry? Of course you are hungry. Bravely said. I should have offered you food earlier-you have the transparent look of a man who has eaten only aliantha for days. Some old seers say that privation refines the soul-but I say it is soon enough to refine the soul when the body has no other choice.

“Happily, I am well supplied with food.” He pushed a prodigious leather sack toward Covenant with his foot, and motioned for him to open it. When Covenant loosened its drawstrings, he found salt beef, cheese, old bread, and more than a dozen tangerines as big as his two fists, as well as a leather jug which he could hardly lift. To postpone this difficulty, he tackled the staples first, washing the salt out of his throat with sections of a tangerine. Then he turned his attention to the jug.

“That is diamondraught,” said Foamfollower. “It is a vital brew. Perhaps I should-No, the more I look at you, my friend, the more weariness I see. Just drink from the jug. It will aid your rest.”

Tilting the jug, Covenant sipped the diamondraught. It tasted like light whiskey, and he could smell its potency; but it was so smooth that it did not bite or burn. He took several relishing swallows, and at once felt deeply refreshed.

Carefully, he closed the jug, replaced the food in the sack, then with an effort pushed the sack back into Foamfollower's reach. The diamondraught glowed in his belly, and he felt that in a little while he would be ready for another story. But as he lay down under the thwarts in the bow, the twilight turned into crystal darkness in the sky, and the stars came out lornly, like scattered children. Before he knew that he was drowsing, he was asleep.

It was an uneasy slumber. He staggered numbly through plague-ridden visions full of dying moons and slaughter and helpless ravaged flesh, and found himself lying in the street near the front bumper of the police car. A circle of townspeople had gathered around him. They had eyes of flint, and their mouths were stretched in one uniform rictus of denunciation. Without exception, they were pointing at his hands. When he lifted his hands to look at them, he saw that they were rife with purple, leprous bruises.

Then two white-clad, brawny men came up to him and manhandled him into a stretcher. He could see the ambulance nearby. But the men did not carry him to it immediately. They stood still, holding him at waist level like a display to the crowd.

A policeman stepped into the circle. His eyes were the colour of contempt. He bent over Covenant and said sternly, “You got in my way. That was wrong. You ought to be ashamed.” His breath covered Covenant with the smell of attar.

Behind the policeman, someone raised his voice. It was as full of unction as that of Joan's lawyer. It said, “That was wrong.”

In perfect unison, all the townspeople vomited gouts of blood onto the pavement.

I don't believe this, Covenant thought.

At once, the unctuous voice purred, “He doesn't believe us.” A silent howl of reality, a rabid assertion of fact, sprang up from the crowd. It battered Covenant until he cowered under it, abject and answerless.

Then the townspeople chorused, “You are dead. Without the community; you can't live. Life is in the community, and you have no community. You can't live if no one cares.” The unison of their voices made a sound like crumbling, crushing. When they stopped, Covenant felt that the air in his lungs had been turned to rubble.

With a sigh of satisfaction, the unctuous voice said, “Take him to the hospital. Heal him. There is only one good answer to death: Heal him and throw him out.”

The two men swung him into the ambulance. Before the door slammed shut, he saw the townspeople shaking hands with each other, beaming their congratulations. After that, the ambulance started to move. He raised his hands, and saw that the purple spots were spreading up his forearms. He stared at himself in horror, moaning, Hellfire hellfire hellfire!

But then a bubbling tenor voice said kindly, “Do not fear. It is a dream.” The reassurance spread over him like a blanket. But he could not feel it with his hands, and the ambulance kept on moving. Needing the blanket, he clenched at the empty air until his knuckles were white with loneliness.

When he felt that he could not ache anymore, the ambulance rolled over, and he fell out of the stretcher into blankness.