Lord Foul's Bane

Three: Invitation to a Betrayal

FOR a time that he could only measure in heartbeats, Covenant hung in the darkness. The red, impaling light was the only fixed point in a universe that seemed to seethe around him. He felt that he might behold a massive moving of heaven and earth, if only he knew where to look; but the blackness and the hot red beam on his forehead prevented him from turning away, and he had to let the currents that swirled around him pass unseen.

Under the pressure of the ferocious light, he could feel every throb of his pulse distinctly in his temples, as if it were his mind which hammered out his life, not his heart. The beats were slow-too slow for the amount of apprehension he felt. He could not conceive what was happening to him. But each blow shook him as if the very structure of his brain were under assault.

Abruptly, the bloody spear of light wavered, then split in two. He was moving toward the light-or the light was approaching him. The two flaming spots were eyes.

The next instant, he heard laughter-high, shrill glee full of triumph and old spite. The voice crowed like some malevolent rooster heralding the dawn of hell, and Covenant's pulse trembled at the sound.

“Done it!” the voice cackled. “I! Mine!” It shrilled away into laughter again.

Covenant was close enough to see the eyes clearly now. They had no whites or pupils; red balls filled the sockets, and light moiled in them like lava. Their heat was so close that Covenant's forehead burned.

Then the eyes flared, seemed to ignite the air around them. Flames spread out, sending a lurid glow around Covenant.

He found himself in a cavern deep in stone. Its walls caught and held the light, so that the cave stayed bright after the single flare of the eyes. The rock was smooth, but broken into hundreds of irregular facets, as if the cavern had been carved with an erratic knife. Entrances gaped in the walls around the circumference of the cave. High above his head, the roof gathered into a thick cluster of stalactites, but the floor was fiat and worn as if by the passing of many feet. Reflections sprang through the stalactites above, so that the cluster swarmed with red gleamings.

The chamber was full of a rank stench, an acrid odour with a sickly sweet under-smell- burning sulphur over the reek of rotting flesh. Covenant gagged on it, and on the sight of the being whose eyes had held him.

Crouched on a low dais near the centre of the cave was a creature with long, scrawny limbs, hands as huge and heavy as shovels, a thin, hunched torso, and a head like a battering ram. As he crouched, his knees came up almost to the level of his ears. One hand was braced on the rock in front of him, the other gripped a long wooden staff shod with metal and intricately carved from end to end. His grizzled mouth was rigid with laughter, and his red eyes seemed to bubble like magma.

“Ha! Done it!” he shrieked again. “Called him. My power. Kill them all!” As his high voice ranted, he slavered hungrily. “Lord Drool! Master! Me!”

The creature leaped to his feet, capering with mad pride. He strode closer to his victim, and Covenant recoiled with a loathing he could not control.

Holding his staff near the centre with both hands, the creature shouted, “Kill you! Take your power! Crush them all! Be Lord Drool!” He raised his staff as if to strike Covenant with it.

Then another voice entered the cavern. It was deep and resonant, powerful enough to fill the air without effort, and somehow deadly, as if an abyss were speaking. “Back, Rockworm!” it commanded. “This prey is too great for you. I claim him.”

The creature jabbed his face toward the ceiling and cried, “Mine! My Staff! You saw. I called him. You saw!”

Covenant followed the red eyes upward, but he could see nothing there except the dizzy chiaroscuro of the clustered stone spikes.

“You had aid,” the deep voice said. “The Staff was too hard a matter for you. You would have destroyed it in simple irritation, had I not taught you some of its uses. And my aid has its price. Do whatever else you wish. I claim this prize. It belongs to me.”

The creature's rage subsided, as if he had suddenly remembered some secret advantage. “My Staff,” he muttered darkly. “I have it. You are not safe.”

“You threaten me?” The deep voice bristled, and its dangers edged closer to the surface. “Watch and ward, Drool Rockworm! Your doom grows upon you. Behold! I have begun!”

There was a low, grinding noise, as of great teeth breaking against each other, and a chilling mist intervened between Covenant and Drool, gathered and swirled and thickened until Drool was blocked from Covenant's sight. At first, the mist glowed with the light of the burning stones, but as it swirled the red faded into the dank, universal grey of fogs. The vile reek melted into a sweeter smell-attar, the odour of, funerals. Despite the blindness of the mist, Covenant` felt that he was no longer in Drool's cavern.

The change gave him no relief. Fear and bewilderment sucked at him as if he were sinking in nightmare. That unbodied voice dismayed him. As the fog blew around him his legs shuddered and bent, and he fell to his knees.

“You do well to pray to me,” the voice intoned. Its deadliness shocked Covenant like a confrontation with grisly murder. “There are no other hopes or helps for a man amid the wrack of your fate. My Enemy will not aid you. It was he who chose you for this doom. And when he has chosen, he does not give; he takes.” A raw timbre of contempt ran through the voice, scraping Covenant's nerves as it passed. “Yes, you would do well to pray to me. I might ease you of your burden. Whatever health or strength you ask is mine to give. For I have begun my attack upon this age, and the future is mine. I will not fail again.”

Covenant's mind lay under the shock of the voice. But the offer of health penetrated him, and his heart jumped. He felt the beat clearly in his chest, felt his heart labouring against the burden of his fear. But he was still too stricken to speak.

Over his silence, the voice continued, "Kevin was a fool-fey, anile and gutless. They are all fools. Look you, groveller. The mighty High Lord Kevin, son of Loric and great-grandson of Berek Lord-Fatherer whom I hate, stood where you now kneel, and he thought to destroy me. He discovered my designs, recognized some measure of my true stature though the dotard had set me on his right side in the Council for long years without sensing his peril-saw at the last who I was. Then there was war between us, war that blasted the west and threatened his precious Keep itself. The feller fist was mine and he knew it. When his armies faltered and his power waned, he lost himself in despair-he became mine in despair. He thought that he still might utterly undo me. Therefore he met me in that cavern from which I have rescued you Kiril Threndor, Heart of Thunder.

"Drool Rockworm does not know what a black rock it is on which he stands. And that is not his only ignorance-but of my deeper plans I say nothing. He serves me well in his way, though he does not intend service. Likewise will you and those timid Lords serve me, whether you choose or no. Let them grope through their shallow mysteries for a time, barely fearing that I am alive. They have not mastered the seventh part of dead Kevin's Lore, and yet in their pride they dare to name themselves Earthfriends, servants of Peace. They are too blind to perceive their own arrogance. But I will teach them to see.

"In truth it is already too late for them. They will come to Kiril Threndor, and I will teach them things to darken their souls. It is fitting. There Kevin met and dared me in his despair. And I accepted. The fool! I could hardly speak the words for laughing. He thought that such spells might unbind me.

"But the Power which upholds me has stood since the creation of Time. Therefore when Kevin dared me to unleash the forces that would strike the Land and all its accursed creations into dust, I took the dare. Yes, and laughed until there was doubt in his face before the end. That folly brought the age of the Old Lords to its ruin-but I remain. I! Together we stood in Kiril Threndor, blind Kevin and I. Together we uttered the Ritual of Desecration. Ah, the fool! He was already enslaved to me and knew it not. Proud of his Lore, he did not know that the very Law which he served preserved me through that cataclysm, though all but a few of his own people and works were stricken into death.

“True, I was reduced for a time. I have spent a thousand years gnawing my desires like a beaten cur. The price of that has yet to be paid-for it and other things I shall exact my due. But I was not destroyed. And when Drool found the Staff and recognized it, and could not use it, I took my chance again. I will have the future of this life, to waste or hold as I desire. So pray to me, groveller. Reject the doom that my Enemy has created for you. You will not have many chances to repent.”

The fog and the attar-laden air seemed to weaken Covenant, as if the strength were being absorbed from his blood. But his heart beat on, and he clung to it for a defence against the fear. He wrapped his arms about his chest and bent low, trying to shelter himself from the cold. “What doom?” he forced himself to say. His voice sounded pitiful and lost in the mist.

“He intends you to be my final foe. He chose, groveller, with a might in your hands such as no mortal has ever held before-chose you to destroy me. But he will find that I am not so easily mastered. You have might-wild magic which preserves your life at this moment-but you will never know what it is. You will not be able to fight me at the last. No, you are the victim of his expectations, and I cannot free you by death-not yet. But we can turn that strength against him, and rid him of the Earth entirely.”

“Health?” Covenant looked painfully up from the ground. “You said health.”

“Whatever health you lack, groveller. Only pray to me, while I am still patient.”

But the voice's contempt cut too deep. Covenant's violence welled up in the wound. He began to fight. Heaving himself up off his knees, he thought, No. I'm not a groveller. With his teeth gritted to stop his trembling, he asked, “Who are you?”

As if sensing its mistake, the voice became smoother. “I have had many names,” it said. “To the Lords of Revelstone, I am Lord Foul the Despiser; to the Giants of Seareach, Satansheart and Soulcrusher. The Ramen name me Fangthane. In the dreams of the Bloodguard, I am Corruption. But the people of the Land call me the Grey Slayer.”

Distinctly, Covenant said, “Forget it.”

“Fool!” ground the voice, and its force flattened Covenant on the rock. Forehead pressed against the stone, he lay and waited in terror for the anger of the voice to annihilate him. "I do not take or eschew action at your bidding. And I will not forget this. I see that your pride is offended by my contempt. Groveller, I will teach you the true meaning of contempt before I am done. But not now. That does not meet my purpose. Soon I will be strong enough to wrest the wild magic from you, and then you will learn to your cost that my contempt is without limit, my desires bottomless.

"But I have wasted time enough. Now to my purpose. Heed me well, groveller. I have a task for you. You will bear a message for me to Revelstone-to the Council of Lords.

"Say to the Council of Lords, and to High Lord Prothall son of Dwillian, that the uttermost limit of their span of days upon the Land is seven times seven years from this present time. Before the end of those days are numbered, I will have the command of life and death in my hand. And as a token that what I say is the one word of truth, tell them this: Drool Rockworm, Cavewight of Mount Thunder, has found the Staff of Law, which was lost ten times a hundred years ago by Kevin at the Ritual of Desecration. Say to them that the task appointed to their generation is to regain the Staff. Without it, they will not be able to resist me for seven years, and my complete victory will be achieved six times seven years earlier than it would be else.

"As for you, groveller: do not fail with this message. If you do not bring it before the Council, then every human in the Land will be dead before ten seasons have passed. You do not understand-but I tell you Drool Rockworm has the Staff, and that it is a cause for terror. He will be enthroned at Lord's Keep in two years if the message fails. Already, the Cavewights are marching to his call; and wolves, and ur-viles of the Demondim, answer the power of the Staff. But war is not the worst peril. Drool delves ever deeper into the dark roots of Mount Thunder-Gravin Threndor, Peak of the Fire-Lions. And there are banes buried in the deeps of the Earth too potent and terrible for any mortal to control. They would make of the universe a hell forever. But such a bane Drool seeks. He searches for the Illearth Stone. If he becomes its master, there will be woe for low and high alike until Time itself falls.

“Do not fail with my message, groveller. You have met Drool. Do you relish dying in his hands?”

The voice paused, and Covenant held his head in his arms, trying to silence the echo of Foul's threats. This is a dream, he thought. A dream! But the blindness of the mist made him feel trapped, encapsulated in insanity. He shuddered with the force of his desire for escape and warmth. “Go away! Leave me alone!”

“One word more,” Foul said, “a final caution. Do not forget whom to fear at the last. I have had to be content with killing and torment. But now my plans are laid, and I have begun. I shall not rest until I have eradicated hope from the Earth. Think on that, and be dismayed!”

Dismayed hung prolonged in the air, while around it grew the noise of grinding, great boulders crushing lesser rocks between them. The sound rushed down onto Covenant, then passed over him and away, leaving him on his knees with his head braced between his arms and his mind blank with panic. He remained rigid there until the grinding was gone, and a low hum of wind rose through the new silence. Then he opened his eyes fearfully, and saw sunlight on the rock before his face.