The Power That Preserves

Sixteen: Colossus

THERE were gaps in the darkness during which Covenant knew dimly that rank liquids were being forced into him. They nourished him despite their rancid taste; his captors were keeping him alive. But between these gaps nothing interrupted his bereavement, his loss of everything he could grasp or recognize. He was dismembered from himself. The shrill vermilion nail of pain which the ur-viles had driven through his forehead impaled his identity, his memory and knowledge and awareness. He was at the nadir-captured, conquered, bereft-and only that iron stab in his forehead stood between him and the last numbness of the end.

So when he began to regain consciousness, he jerked toward it like a half-buried corpse, striving to shift the weight which enfolded him like the ready arms of his grave. Cold ebbed into him from the abyss of the winter. His heart laboured; shuddering ran through him like a crisis. His hands clutched uselessly at the frozen dirt.

Then rough hands flopped him onto his back. A grim visage advanced, receded. Something struck his chest. He gasped at the force of the blow. Yet it helped him; it seemed to break him free of imminent hysteria. He began to breathe more easily. In a moment, he became aware that he was beating the back of his head against the ground. With an effort, he stopped himself. Then he concentrated on trying to see.

He wanted to see, wanted to find some answer to the completeness of his loss. And his eyes were open-must have been open, or he would not have been able to perceive the shadowy countenance snarling over him. Yet he could not make it out. His eyeballs were dry and blind; he saw nothing but cold, universal grey smeared around the more compact grey of the visage.

“Up, Covenant,” a harsh voice rasped. “You are of no use as you are.”

Another blow knocked his head to the side. He lurched soddenly. Through the pain in his cheek, he felt himself gaping into the raw wind. He blinked painfully at the dryness of his eyes, and tears began to resolve his blindness into shapes and spaces.

“Up, I say!”

He seemed to recognize the voice without knowing whose it was. But he lacked the strength to turn his head for another look. Resting on the icy ground, he blinked until his sight came into focus on a high, monolithic fist of stone.

It was perhaps twenty yards from him and forty feet tall-an obsidian column upraised on a plinth of native rock, and gnarled at its top into a clench of speechless defiance. Beyond it he could see nothing; it stood against a background of clouds as if it were erect on the rim of the world. At first, it appeared to him a thing of might, an icon of Earthpower upthrust or set down there to mark a boundary against evil. But as his vision cleared, the stone seemed to grow shallow and slumberous, blank; while he blinked at it, it became as inert as any old rock. If it still lived, he no longer had the eyes to see its life.

Slowly, fragments of other senses returned to him. He discovered that he could hear the wind hissing ravenously past him like a river thrashing across rapids; and behind it was a deep, muffled booming like the thunder of a waterfall.

“Up!” the harsh voice repeated. “Must I beat you senseless to awaken you?”

Mordant laughter echoed after the demand as if it were a jest.

Abruptly, the rough hands caught hold of his robe and yanked him off the ground. He was still too weak to carry his own weight, too weak even to hold up his head. He leaned against the man’s chest and panted at his pain, trying with futile fingers to grasp the man’s shoulders.

“Where-?” he croaked at last. “Where-?”

The laughter ridiculed him again. Two unrecognizable voices were laughing at him.

“Where?” the man snapped. “Thomas Covenant, you are at my mercy. That is the only where which signifies.”

Straining, Covenant heaved up his head and found himself staring miserably into Triock’s dark scowl.

Triock? He tried to say the name, but his voice failed him.

“You have slain everything that was precious to me. Think on that, Unbeliever”-he invested the title with abysms of contempt-“if you require to know where you are.”

Triock?

“There is murder and degradation in your every breath. Ah! you stink of it.” A spasm of revulsion knotted Triock’s face, and he dropped Covenant to the ground again.

Covenant landed heavily amid sarcastic mirth. He was still too dazed to collect his thoughts. Triock’s disgust affected him like a command; he lay prostrate with his eyes closed, trying to smell himself.

It was true. He stank of leprosy. The disease in his hands and feet reeked, gave off a rotten effluvium out of all proportion to the physical size of his infection. And its message was unmistakable. The ordure in him, the putrefaction of his flesh, was spreading-expanding as if he were contagious, as if at last even his body had become a violation of the fundamental health of the Land. In some ways, this was an even more important violation than the Despiser’s winter-or rather his stench was the crown of the wind, the apex of Lord Foul’s intent. That intent would be complete when his illness became part of the wind, when ice and leprosy together extinguished the Land’s last vitality.

Then, in one intuitive leap, he understood his sense of bereavement. He identified his loss. Without looking to verify the perception, he knew that his ring had been taken from him; he could feel its absence like destitution in his heart.

The Despiser’s manipulations were complete. The coercion and subterfuge which had shaped Covenant’s experiences in the Land had borne fruit. Like a Stone-warped tree, they had fructified to produce this unanswerable end. The wild magic was now in Lord Foul’s possession.

A wave of grief rushed through Covenant. The enormity of the disaster he had precipitated upon the Land appalled him. His chest locked in a clench of sorrow, and he huddled on the verge of weeping.

But before he could release his pain, Triock was at him again. The Stonedownor gripped the shoulders of his robe, shook him until his bones rattled. “Awaken!” Triock rasped viciously. “Your time is short. My time is short. I do not mean to waste it.”

For a moment, Covenant could not resist; inanition and unconsciousness and grief crippled him. But then Triock’s gratuitous violence struck sparks into the forgotten tinder of Covenant’s rage. Anger galvanized him, brought back control to his muscles. He twisted in Triock’s grip, got an arm and a leg braced on the ground. Triock released him, and he climbed unevenly to his feet, panting, “Hell and blood! Don’t touch me, you-Raver!”

Triock stepped forward as Covenant came erect and stretched him on the dirt again with one sharp blow. Standing over Covenant, he shouted in a voice full of outrage, “I am no Raver! I am Triock son of Thuler! — the man who loved Lena Atiaran-child- the man who took the part of a father for Elena daughter of Lena because you abandoned her! You cannot deny any blow I choose to strike against you!”

At that, Covenant heard laughter again, but he still could not identify its source. Triock’s blow made the pain in his forehead roar; the noise of the hurt confused his hearing. But when the worst of the sound passed, his eyes seemed to clear at last. He forced himself to look up steadily into Triock’s face.

The man had changed again. The strange combination of loathing and hunger, of anger and fear, was gone; the impression he had created that he was using his own anguish cunningly was gone. In the place of such distortions was an extravagant bitterness, a rage not controlled by any of his old restraints. He was himself and not himself. The former supplication of his eyes-the balance and ballast of his long acquaintance with gall-had foundered in passion. Now his brows clenched themselves into a knot of violence above the bridge of his nose; the pleading lines at the corners of his eyes had become as deep as scars; and his cheeks were taut with grimaces. Yet something in his eyes themselves belied the focus of his anger. His orbs were glazed and milky, as if they were blurred by cataracts, and they throbbed with a vain intensity. He looked as if he were going blind.

The sight of him made Covenant’s own rage feel in condign, faulty. He was beholding another of his victims. He had no justification for anger. “Triock!” he groaned, unable to think of any other response. “Triock!”

The Stonedownor paused, allowing him a chance to regain his feet, then advanced threateningly.

Covenant retreated a step or two. He needed something to say, something that could penetrate or deflect Triock’s bitterness. But his thoughts were stunned; they groped ineffectually, as if they had been rendered fingerless by the loss of his ring. Triock swung at him. He parried the blow with his forearms, kept himself from being knocked down again. Words-he needed words.

“Hellfire!” he shouted because he could not find any other reply. “What happened to your Oath of Peace?”

“It is dead,” Triock growled hoarsely. “It is dead with a spike of wood in its belly!” He swung again, staggered Covenant. “The Law of Death is broken, and all Peace has been laid waste.”

Covenant regained his balance and retreated farther. “Triock!” he gasped. “I didn’t kill her. She died trying to save my life. She knew it was my fault, and she still tried to save me. She would fight you now if she saw you like this! What did that Raver do to you?”

The Stonedownor advanced with slow ferocity.

“You’re not like this!” Covenant cried. “You gave your whole life to prove you’re not like this!”

Springing suddenly, Triock caught Covenant by the throat. His thumbs ground into Covenant’s windpipe as he snarled, “You have not seen what I have seen!”

Covenant struggled, but he had no strength to match Triock’s. His fingers clawed and clutched, and had no effect. The need for air began to hum in his ears.

Triock released one hand, cocked his fist deliberately, and hit Covenant in the centre of his wounded forehead. He pitched backward, almost fell. But hands caught him from behind, yanked him upright, put him on his feet-hands that burned him like the touch of acid.

He jerked away from them, then whirled to see who had burned him. Fresh blood ran from his yammering forehead into his eyes, clogged his vision, but he gouged it away with numb fingers, made himself see the two figures that had caught him.

They were laughing at him together. Beat for beat, their ridicule came as one, matched each other in weird consonance; they sounded like one voice jeering through two throats.

They were Ramen.

He saw them in an instant, took them in as if they had been suddenly revealed out of midnight by a flash of dismay. He recognized them as two of Manethrall Kam’s Cords, Lal and Whane. But they had changed. Even his truncated vision could see the alteration which had been wrought in them, the complete reversal of being which occupied them. Contempt and lust submerged the former spirit of their health. Only the discomfortable spasms which flicked their faces, and the unnecessary violence of their emanations, gave any indication that they had ever been unlike what they were now.

“Our friend Triock spoke the truth,” they said together, and the unharmonized unison of their voices mocked both Covenant and Triock. “Our brother is not with us. He is at work in the destruction of Revelstone. But Triock will take his place-for a time. A short time. We are turiya and moksha, Herem and Jehannum. We have come to take delight in the ruin of things we hate. You are nothing to us now, groveller-Unbeliever.” Again they laughed, one spirit or impulse uttering contempt through two throats. “Yet you-and our friend Triock-amuse us while we wait.”

But Covenant hardly heard them. An instant after he comprehended what had happened to them, he saw something else, something that almost blinded him to the Ravers. Two other figures stood a short distance behind Whane and Lal.

The two people he had most ached to see since he had regained himself in Morinmoss: Saltheart Foamfollower and Bannor.

The sight of them filled him with horror.

Foamfollower wore a host of recent battle-marks among his older scars, and Banner’s silvering hair and lined face had aged perceptibly. But all that was insignificant beside the grisly fact that they were not moving.

They did not so much as turn their heads toward Covenant. They were paralyzed, clenched rigid and helpless, by a green force which played about them like a corona, enveloped them in coercion. They were as motionless as if even pulse and respiration had been crushed out of them by shimmering emerald.

And if they had been able to look at Covenant, they would not have seen him. Their eyes were like Triock’s, but much more severely glazed. Only the faintest outlines of pupil and iris were visible behind the white blindness which covered their orbs.

Bannor! Covenant cried. Foamfollower! Ah!

While his body swayed on locked joints, he cowered inwardly. His arms covered his head as if to protect it from an axe. The plight of Bannor and Foamfollower dealt him an unendurable shock. He could not bear it. He quailed where he stood as if the ground were heaving under him.

Then Triock caught hold of him again. The Stonedownor bent him to the dirt, hunched furiously over him to pant, “You have not seen what I have seen. You do not know what you have done.”

Weak, ringless, and miserable though he was, Covenant still heard Triock, heard the whelming passion with which Triock told him that even now he did not know the worst, had not faced the worst. And that communication made a difference to him. It pushed him deep into his fear, down to a place in him which had not been touched by either capture or horror. It drove him back to the calm which had been given to him in Morinmoss. He seemed to remember a part of himself that had been hidden from him. Something had been changed for him in the Forest, something which could not be taken away. He caught hold of it, immersed himself in the gift.

A moment later, he raised his head as if he had come through a dark gulf of panic. He was too weak to fight Triock; he had lost his ring; blood streamed from his damaged forehead into his eyes. But he was no longer at the mercy of fear.

Blinking rapidly to clear his vision, he gasped up at Triock, “What’s happened to them?”

“You have not seen!” Triock roared. Once more, he raised his fist to hammer the Unbeliever’s face. But before he could strike, a low voice commanded simply, “Stop.”

Triock jerked, struggling to complete his blow.

“I have given you time. Now I desire him to know what I do.”

The command held Triock; he could not strike. Trembling, he wrenched away from Covenant, then spun back to point lividly toward the stone column and shout, “There!”

Covenant lurched to his feet, wiped his eyes.

Midway between him and the upreared fist of stone stood Elena!

She was robed in radiant green velure, and she bore herself proudly, like a queen. She seemed swathed in an aura of emeralds; her presence sparkled like gems when she smiled. At once, without effort of assertion, she showed that she was the master of the situation. The Ravers and Triock waited before her like subjects before their liege.

In her right hand she held a long staff. It was metal-shod at both ends, and between its heels it was intricately carved with the runes and symbols of theurgy.

The Staff of Law.

But the wonder of its appearance there meant nothing to Covenant compared with the miracle of Elena’s return. He had loved her, lost her. Her death at the hands of dead Kevin Landwaster had brought his second sojourn in the Land to an end. Yet she stood now scarcely thirty feet from him. She was smiling.

A thrill of joy shot through him. The love which had tormented his heart since her fall rushed up in him until he felt he was about to burst with it. Blood streamed from his eyes like tears. Joy choked him so that he could not speak. Half blinded, half weeping, he shrugged off his travail and started toward her as if he meant to throw himself down before her, kiss her feet.

Before he had crossed half the distance, she made a short gesture with the Staff, and at once a jolt of force hit him. It drove the air from his lungs, pitched him to his hands and knees on the hard ground.

“No,” she said softly, almost tenderly. “All your questions will be answered before I slay you, Thomas Covenant, ur-Lord and Unbeliever-beloved.” On her cold lips, the word beloved impugned him. “But you will not touch me. You will come no closer.”

A great weight leaned against his shoulders, held him to the ground. He retched for air, but when he gasped it into his lungs, it hurt him as if he were inhaling disease. The atmosphere around him reeked with her presence. She pervaded the air like rot. On a scale that dwarfed him, she smelled as he did-smelled like-leprosy.

He forced up his head, gaped gasping at her from under the streaming spike of his wound.

With a smile like a smirk or leer, she extended her left hand toward him and opened it, so that he could see lying in her palm his white gold wedding band.

Elena! he retched voicelessly. Elena! He felt that he was being crushed under a burden of impenetrable circumstance. In supplication and futility, he reached toward her, but she only laughed at him quietly, as if he were a masque of impotence enacted for her pleasure.

A moment passed before his anguish permitted him to see her clearly, and while he grovelled without comprehension, she shone defiantly before him like a soul of purest emerald. But slowly he recovered his vision. Like a reborn phoenix, she flourished in green loveliness. Yet in some way she reminded him of the spectre of Kevin Landwaster-a spirit dredged out of its uneasy grave by commands of irrefusable cruelty. Her expression was as placid as power could make it; she radiated triumph and decay. But her eyes were completely lightless, dark. It was as if the strange bifurcation, the dualness, of her sight had gone completely to its other pole, away from the tangible things around her. She seemed not to see where or who she was, what she did; her gaze was focused elsewhere, on the secret which compelled her.

She had become a servant of the Despiser. Even while she stood there with the Staff and the ring in her hands, Lord Foul’s eyes held her like the eyes of a serpent.

In her violated beauty, Covenant beheld the doom of the Land. It would be kept fair, so that Lord Foul could more keenly relish its ravishment-and it would be diseased to the marrow.

“Elena,” he panted, then paused, gagging at the reek of her. “Elena. Look at me.”

With a disdainful toss of her head, she turned away from him, moved a step or two closer to the stone pillar. ‘ Triock,” she commanded lightly, “answer the Unbeliever’s questions. I do not wish him to be in ignorance. His despair will make a pretty present for the master.”

At once, Triock strode stiffly forward, and stood so that Covenant could see him without fighting the pressure which held him to the ground. The Stonedownor’s scowl had not changed, not abated one muscle or line of its vehemence, but his voice carried an odd undertow of grief. He began roughly, as if he were reading an indictment: “You have asked where you are. You are at Landsdrop. Behind you lies the Fall of the River Landrider and the northmost reach of the Southron Range. Before you stands the Colossus of the Fall.”

Covenant panted at this information as if it interfered with his ragged efforts to breathe.

“Perhaps the Lords”-Triock hissed the word Lords in rage or desperation-“have spoken to you of the Colossus. In ages long past, it uttered the power of the One Forest to interdict its enemies the three Ravers from the Upper Land. The Colossus has been silent for millennia-silent since men broke the spirit of the Forest. Yet you may observe that turiya and moksha do not approach the stone. While one Forestal still lives in the remnants of the Forest, the Colossus may not be altogether undone. Thus it remains a thorn in the Despiser’s mastery.

“It is now Elena’s purpose to destroy this stone.”

Behind Covenant, both Ravers growled with pleasure at the thought.

“This has not been possible until now. Since this war began, Elena has stood here with the Staff of Law in support of the master’s armies. With the Staff’s power, she has held this winter upon the Land, thus freeing the master for other war work. This place was chosen for her so that she would be ready if the Colossus awoke-and so that she could destroy it if it did not awaken. But it has resisted her.” The hardness in his voice sounded almost like rage at Elena. “There is Earthpower in it yet.

“But with the Staff and the wild magic, she will be capable. She will throw the rubble of the Colossus from its cliff. And when you have seen that no ancient bastion, however Earthpowerful and incorruptible, can stand against a servant of the master-then Elena Foul-wife will slay you where you kneel in your despair. She will slay us all.” With a jerk of his head, he included Bannor and Foamfollower.

In horrific unison, the Ravers laughed.

Covenant writhed under the pressure which held him. “How?”

His question could have meant many things, but Triock understood him. “Because the Law of Death has been broken!” he rasped. Fury flamed in his voice; he could no longer contain it. He watched Elena as she moved gracefully toward the Colossus, preparing herself to challenge it, and his voice blared after her as if he were striving in spite of her coercion to find some way to restrain her. Clearly, he knew how he was being compelled, what was being done to him, and the knowledge filled him with torment. “Broken!” he repeated, almost shouting. “When she employed the Power of Command to bring Kevin Landwaster back from his grave, she broke the Law which separates life from death. She made it possible for the master to call her back in her turn-and with her the Staff of Law. Therefore she is his servant. And in her hands, the Staff serves him-though he would not use it himself, lest he share the fate of Drool Rockworm. Thus all Law is warped to his will!

“Behold her, Thomas Covenant! She is unchanged. Within her still lives the spirit of the daughter of Lena. Even as she readies herself for this destruction, she remembers what she was and hates what she is.” His chest heaved as if he were strangling on bitterness. “That is the master’s way. She is resurrected so that she may participate in the ruin of the Land-the Land she loves!”

He no longer made any pretence of speaking to Covenant; he hurled his voice at Elena as if his tone were the only part of him still able to resist her. “Elena Foul-wife”- he uttered the name with horror- “now holds the white gold. She is more the master’s servant than any Raver. In the hands of turiya or moksha, that power would breed rebellion. With wild magic, any Raver would throw down the master if he could, and take a new seat in the thronehall of Ridjeck Thome. But Elena will not rebel. She will not use the wild magic to free herself. She has been commanded from the dead, and her service is pure!”

He raged the word pure at her as if it were the worst affront he could utter. But she was impervious to him, secure in power and triumph. She only smiled faintly, amused by his ranting, and continued to make her preparations.

With her back to Covenant and Triock, she faced the monolith. It towered over her as if it were about to fall and crush her, but her stance admitted to no possibility of danger. With the Staff and the ring, she was superior to every power in the Land. In radiance and might, she raised her hands, holding up the Staff of Law and the white gold. Her sleeves fell from her arms. Exulting and exalted, she began to sing her attack on the Colossus of the Fall.

Her song hurt Covenant’s ears, exacerbating his raw helplessness. He could not bear her intent, and could not oppose it; her interdict kept him on his knees like fetters of humiliation. Though he was only a dozen yards from her, he could not reach her, could not interfere with her purpose.

His thoughts raced madly, scrambled for alternatives. He could not abide the destruction of the Colossus. He had to find another answer.

“Foamfollower!” he croaked in desperation. “I don’t know what’s happening to you-I don’t know what’s being done to you. But you’ve got to fight it! You’re a Giant! You’ve got to stop her! Try to stop her! Foamfollower! Bannor!”

The Ravers met his plea with sardonic jeers, and Triock rasped without taking his eyes off Elena, “You are a fool, Thomas Covenant. They cannot help you. They are too strong to be mastered-as I have been mastered-and too weak to be masters. Therefore she has imprisoned them by the power of the Staff. The Staff crushes all resistance. Thus it is proven that Law does not oppose Despite. We are all mastered beyond redemption.”

“Not you!” Covenant responded urgently. He fought the pressure until he feared his lungs would break, but he could not free himself. Without his ring, he felt as crippled as if his arms had been amputated. Without it, he weighed less than nothing in the scales of the Land’s fate. “Not you!” he gasped again. “I can hear you, Triock! You! She isn’t afraid of you-she isn’t holding you. Triock! Stop her!”

Again the Ravers laughed. But this time Covenant heard the strain in their voices. Heaving against his captivity, he managed to wrench his head around far enough to look at Whane and Lal.

They still stood a safe distance from the Colossus. Neither made any move to help Covenant or oppose Elena. Both went on chuckling as if they could not help themselves. Yet their exertion was unmistakable. They were white-lipped and rigid; beads of effort ran down their faces. With all the long pride of their people, the Ramen were struggling to break free.

And behind them, Foamfollower and Bannor strove for freedom also. Somehow, both of them had found the strength to move slightly. Foamfollower’s head was bowed, and he clenched his face with one hand as if he were trying to alter the shape of his skull. Banner’s fingers clawed at his sides; his face grew taut, baring his teeth. Urgently, desperately, they fought Elena’s power.

Their ordeal felt terrible to Covenant-terrible and hopeless. Like the Ramen, they were beyond the limits of what they could do. Pressure mounted in them, radiated from them. It was so acute that Covenant feared their hearts would rupture. And they had no chance of success. The power of the Staff increased to crush every extravagance of their self-expenditure.

Their futility hurt Covenant more than his own. He was accustomed to impotence, inured to it, but Bannor and Foamfollower were not. The stark vision of their defeat almost made him cry out in anguish. He wanted to shout to them, beg them to stop before they drove themselves soul-mad.

But the next instant a surge of new hope shot through him as he suddenly understood what they were doing. They knew they could not escape, were not trying to escape. They fought toward another goal. Elena was paying no attention to them; she concentrated on preparing for the destruction of the Colossus. So she was not actively exerting herself to imprison them. She had simply left her compulsion in the air and turned her back.

Foamfollower and Bannor were drawing on this compulsion, using it-using it up. As the Giant and the Bloodguard strained for freedom, strove with all their personal might, Triock jerked his head from side to side, quivered in a fever of passion, snapped his jaws as if he were trying to tear hunks of domination out of the air-and began to move toward Elena.

The Ravers made no attempt to stop him. They could not; the struggles of the Ramen gave them no leeway in which to act.

Triock strained as he moved as if his bones were being torn asunder, and he quavered imploringly again and again, “Elena? Elena?” But he moved; he advanced step by step toward her.

Covenant watched him in an agony of suspense.

Before he came within arm’s reach of her, she said severely, “Stop.”

Swaying in a gale of conflicting demands, Triock halted.

“If you resist me one more step,” she grated, “I will tear your heart from your pathetic old body and feed it to Herem and Jehannum while you observe them and beg me to let you die.”

Triock was weeping now, shaking with importunate sobs. “Elena? Elena?”

Without even glancing at him, she resumed her song.

But the next instant, something snatched at her attention, spun her away from the Colossus. Her face pointed lividly toward the west. Surprise and anger contorted her features. For a moment, she stared in speechless indignation at the intrusion.

Then she brandished the Staff of Law. “The Lords strike back!” she howled furiously. “Samadhi is threatened! They dare!”

Covenant gaped at the information, at her knowledge of the siege of Revelstone. But he had no time to assimilate it.

“Foul’s blood!” she raged. “Blast them, Raver!” Immense forces gathered in the Staff, mounting to be hurled across the distance to samadhi Sheol’s aid.

For that instant, she neglected her compulsion of the people around her.

The blindness lost its hold on Bannor and Foamfollower. They tottered, lurched, started into motion. The Ravers tried to react, but could not move quickly enough against the resistance of the Ramen.

Covenant felt the pressure on his back ease. At once, he rolled out from under it. Springing to his feet, he launched himself toward Elena.

But Triock was the only one close enough to her to take advantage of her lapse. With a wild cry, he chopped both fists down at her left hand.

His hands passed through her spectral flesh and struck the ring. The unexpectedness of the blow tore the solid band from her surprised fingers. It dropped free.

He dove after it, got one hand on it, flicked it away toward Covenant as his body slapped the hard ground.

Elena’ s reaction came instantly. Before Triock could roll, try to evade her, she stabbed the Staff down at him, hit him in the centre of his back. Power flared through him, shattering his spine.

Almost in the same motion, she swung the Staff up again, caught it in a combat grip as she whirled to face Covenant.

His start toward her almost made him miss the ring. It went past him on one side, but he skidded and pounced on it, scooped it up before she could stop him. With his wedding band clenched in his fist, he braced himself to meet her attack.

She regarded him momentarily, then chose not to exert herself against him. With one wave of the Staff, she re-imprisoned Foamfollower and Bannor, quenched the rebellion of the Ramen. Then she dropped her guard as if she no longer needed it. Her voice shook with anger, but she was steady as she said, “It will not avail him. He knows not how to awaken its might. Herem, Jehannum-I leave him to you.”

In horrid unison, the two Ravers snarled their satisfaction, their hunger for him. Together, they moved slowly toward him.

He was caught between them and Elena.

So that he would not lose his ring again, he pushed it onto his wedding finger. He had lost weight; his fingers were gaunt, and the ring hung on him insecurely, as if it might fall off at any moment. Yet his need for it had never been greater. He clenched his fist around it and retreated before the advance of the Ravers.

In the back of his mind, he was sure that Triock was not dead. Triock was his summoner; he would disappear from the Land as soon as the Stonedownor died. But Triock surely had only moments of life left. Without knowing how to do it, Covenant wanted to make those moments count.

He backed away from the Ravers, toward Elena. She stood at rest near the Colossus, observing him. Glee and anger were balanced in her face. The Ravers came at him step by slow step, with their arms extended hungrily, sarcastically, inviting him to abandon resistance and rush into the oblivion of their grasp.

They advanced; he retreated; she stood where she was, defying him to touch her. His ring hung lifeless on his finger as if it were a thing of metal and futility, nothing more-a talisman devoid of meaning in his hands. A rising tide of protest filled him with ineffectual curses.

Hellfire. Hellfire. Hell and blood!

Impulsively, without knowing why he did it, he shrieked into the grey wind, “Forestall Help me!”

At once, the clenched crown of the Colossus burst into flame. For an instant while Herem and Jehannum yowled, the monolith blazed with verdant fire-a conflagration the colour of leaves and grass flourishing, green that had nothing in common with Lord Foul’s emerald Illearth Stone. Raw, fertile aromas crackled in the air like violent spring.

Abruptly, two bolts of force raged out of the blaze, sprang like lightning at the Ravers. In a coruscating welter of sparks and might, the bolts struck the chests of Lal and Whane.

The monolith’s power flamed at their hearts until the mortal flesh of the Ramen was incinerated, flash-burned into nothingness. Then the bolts dropped, the conflagration vanished.

Herem and Jehannum were gone.

The sudden blast and vanishing of the fire staggered Covenant. Forgetting his peril, he stared dumbly about him. The Ramen were dead. More blood, more lives sacrificed to his impotence. He wanted to cry out, No!

Some instinct warned him. He ducked, and the Staff of Law hissed past his head.

He jumped away, turned, caught his balance. Elena was advancing toward him. She held the Staff poised in both hands. Her face was full of murder.

She could have felled him with an exertion of the Staff’s might, ravaged him where he stood by unleashing her power against him. But she was too mad with rage for such fighting. She wanted to crush him physically, beat him to death with the strength of her own arms. As he faced her, she gestured toward Foamfollower and Banner without even glancing in their direction. They crumpled like puppets with cut strings, fell on their faces and lay still. Then she raised the Staff over his head like an axe and hacked at Covenant.

With a desperate fling of his arm, he deflected the Staff so that it slammed against his right shoulder rather than his head. The force of the blow seemed to paralyze his whole right side, but he grappled for the Staff with his left hand, caught hold of it, prevented her from snatching it back for another strike.

Quickly, she shifted her hands on the Staff and threw her weight onto the wood to take advantage of his defence. Bearing down on his shoulder, she drove him to his knees.

He braced his numb arm on the ground and strained to resist her, tried to get his feet under him. But he was too weak. She changed the direction of her pressure so that it jammed squarely against his throat. He had to fight the Staff with both hands to keep his larynx from being crushed. Slowly, almost effortlessly, she bent him back.

Then she had him flat on the ground. He pushed against the Staff with all his waning strength, but he could not stop her. His breathing was cut off. His bloodied eyes throbbed in their sockets as he stared at her ferocity.

Her gaze was focused on him as if he were food for the rankest hunger of her ill soul. Through it, he seemed to see the Despiser slavering in triumph and scorn. And yet her eyes showed something else as well. Triock had told the truth about her. Behind the savagery of her glare, he felt the last unconquerable core of her sobbing with revulsion.

He lacked the strength to save himself. If he could have hated her, met her fury with fury, he might have been capable of one convulsive heave, one thrust to buy himself another moment or two of life. But he could not. She was his daughter; he loved her. He had put her where she was as surely as if he had been a conscious servant of the Despiser all along. She was about to kill him, and he loved her. The only thing left for him was to die without breaking faith with himself.

He used his last air and his last resistance to croak, “You don’t even exist.”

His words inflamed her like an ultimate denial. In mad fury, she eased the pressure for an instant while she gathered all her force, all her strength, and all the power of the Staff, for one crush which would eradicate the offense of his life. She took a deep breath as if she were inhaling illimitable might, then threw her weight and muscle and power, her very Foul-given existence, through the Staff at his throat.

But his hands were clenched on the Staff. His ring pressed the wood. When her force touched his white gold, the wild magic erupted like an uncapped volcano.

His senses went blank at the immensity of the blast. Yet not one flame or thrust of it touched him; all the detonation went back through the Staff at Elena.

It did not hurl her off him; it was not that kind of power. But it tore through the rune-carved wood of the Staff like white sun-fire, rent the Staff fiber from fiber as if its Law were nothing but a shod bundle of splinters. A sharp riving shook the atmosphere, so that even the Colossus seemed to recoil from this unleashing of power.

The Staff of Law turned to ash in dead Elena’s hands.

At once, the wind lurched as if the eruption of wild magic were an arrow in its bosom. With flutters and gusts and silent cries, it tumbled to the ground, came to an end as if the raw demon of winter had been stricken out of the air with one shaft.

A whirl of force sprang up around Elena, mounted like a wind devil with her in its centre. Her death had come back for her; the Law she had broken was sucking her out of life again. As Covenant watched-stunned and uncomprehending, almost blinded by his reprieve-she began to dissipate. Particle by particle, her being vanished into the gyre, fled into dissolution. But while she faded and failed, lost her ill existence, she found the solidity for one final cry.

“Covenant,” she called like a lorn voice of desolation. “Beloved! Strike a blow for me!”

Then she was gone, reabsorbed into death. The gyre grew pale, paler, until it had disappeared in unruffled air.

Covenant was left alone with his victims.

Involuntarily, through means over which he had no control, he had saved himself-and had allowed his friends to be struck down. He felt chastened, frail, as devoid of victory as if he had actively slain the woman he loved.

So many people had sacrificed themselves.

He knew that Triock was still alive, so he climbed painfully to his feet and stumbled over to the fallen Stonedownor. Triock’s breathing rattled like blood in his throat; he would be dead soon. Covenant seated himself on the ground and lifted Triock so that the man’s head rested on his lap.

Triock’s face was disfigured by the force which had smashed him. His charred skin peeled off his skull in places, and his eyes had been seared. From the slack dark hole of his mouth came faint plumes of smoke like the fleeing wisps of his soul.

Covenant hugged Triock’s head with both arms and began to weep.

After a time, the Stonedownor sensed in some way who held him. Through the death thickening in his gullet, he struggled to speak. “Covenant.”

His voice was barely audible, but Covenant fought back his tears to respond, “I hear you.”

“You are not to blame. She was-flawed from birth.”

That was as far as his mercy could go. After one final wisp, the smoke faded away. Covenant held him, and knew he had no pulse or breath of life left.

He understood that Triock had forgiven him. The Stonedownor was not to blame if his gift gave no consolation. In addition to everything else, Covenant was responsible for the flaw of Elena’s birth. She was the daughter of a crime which could never be undone. So he could do nothing but sit with Triock’s unanswerable head in his lap, and weep while he waited for the reversal of his summons, the end which would reave him of the Land.

But no end came. In the past, he had always begun to fail as soon as his summoner died; but now he remained. Moments passed, and still he was undiminished. Gradually, he realized that this time he would not disappear, that for reasons he did not understand, he had not yet lost his chance.

He did not have to accept Elena’s fate. It was not the last word-not yet.

When Bannor and Foamfollower stirred, groaned, began to regain consciousness, he made himself move. Carefully, deliberately, he took his ring from his wedding finger and placed it on the index finger of his halfhand, so that it would be less likely to slip off.

Then, amid all his grief and regret, he stood up on bones that could bear anything, and hobbled over to help his friends.