Lord Foul's Bane (49 page)

At once, the Cords Hurn, Thew, Grace, and Rustah stepped forward and avowed their willingness to go wherever Manethrall Lithe would lead them.

Prothall bowed to Lithe in the Ramen fashion. “The service you offer is great. We know that your hearts are with the Ranyhyn. As friends we would refuse this honour if our need as allies were not so great. The doom of these times compels us to refuse no aid or succour. Be welcome among us. Your hunter skill will greatly ease the hazards of our way. We hope to do you honour in return- if we survive our Quest.”

“Kill Fangthane,” said Lithe. “That will do us honour enough to the end of our days.” She returned Prothall's bow, and all the assembled Ramen joined her.

Then the High Lord spoke to his companions. In a moment, the Quest for the Staff of Law was mounted and ready to ride. Led by Manethrall Lithe and her Cords, the company cantered away from Manhome as if in the village of the Ramen they had found abundant courage.

Twenty One: Treacher's Gorge

   THEY crossed the Plains northward in confidence and good spirits. No danger or report of danger appeared anywhere along their way. And the Ranyhyn rode the grasslands like live blazonry, challenges uttered in flesh. Foamfollower told gay tales as if he wished to show that he had reached the end of a passing travail. Quaan and his warriors responded with ripostes and jests. And the Ramen entertained them with displays of hunting skill. The company rode late into the first night, in defiance of the dismal moon. And the second night, they camped on the south bank of Roamsedge Ford.

But early the next morning they crossed the Ford and turned northeast up a broad way between the Roamsedge and Morinmoss. By mid-afternoon, they reached the eastmost edge of the Forest. From there, the Roamsedge, the northern border of the Plains, swung more directly eastward, and the company went on northeast, away from both Morinmoss and the Plains of Ra. That night, they slept on the edge of a stark, unfriendly flatland where no people lived and few willingly travelled. The whole region north of them was cut and scarred and darkened like an ancient battleground, a huge field that had been ruined by the shedding of too much blood. Scrub grass, stunted trees, and a few scattered
aliantha
took only slight hold on the uncompromising waste. The company was due south of Mount Thunder.

As the Quest angled northeastward across this land, Mhoram told Covenant some of its history. It spread east to Landsdrop, and formed the natural front of attack for Lord Foul's armies in the ancient wars. From the Fall of the River Landrider to Mount Thunder was open terrain along the great cliff of Landsdrop. The hordes issuing from Foul's Creche could ascend in scores of places to bring battle to the Upper Land. So it was that the first great battles in all the Land's wars against the Despiser occurred across this ravaged plain. Age after age, the defenders strove to halt Lord Foul at Landsdrop, and failed because they could not block all the ways up from the Spoiled Plains and Sarangrave Flat. Then Lord Foul's armies passed westward along the Mithil, and struck deep into the Centre Plains. In the last war, before Kevin Landwaster had been finally driven to invoke the Ritual of Desecration, Lord Foul had crushed through the heart of the Centre Plains, and had turned north to force the Lords to their final battle at Kurash Plenethor, now named Trothgard.

In the presence of so much old death, the riders did not travel loudly. But they sang songs during the first few days, and several times they returned to the legend telling of Berek Halfhand and the Fire-Lions of Mount Thunder. On this wilderland Berek had fought, suffering the deaths of his friends and the loss of his fingers in battle. Here he had met despair, and had fled to the slopes of Gravin Threndor, the Peak of the Fire-Lions. And there he had found both Earthfriendship and Earthpower. It was a comforting song, and the riders sang its refrain together as if they sought to make it true for themselves:

Berek! Earthfriend! help and weal,

Battle aid against the foe! 

Earth gives and answers Power's peal, 

Ringing, Earthfriend! Help and heal!

Cleanse the Land from bloody death and woe!

They needed its comfort. The hard, reft and harrowed war-land seemed to say that Berek's victory was an illusion- that all his Earthfriendship and his Staff of Law and his lineage of Lords, his mighty works and the works of his descendants, amounted to so much scrub grass and charred rock and dust- that the true history of the Land was written here, in the bare topsoil and stone which lay like a litter of graves from the Plains of Ra to Mount Thunder, from Andelain to Landsdrop.

The atmosphere of the region agitated Foamfollower. He strode at Covenant's side with an air of concealed urgency, as if he were repressing a desire to break into a run. And he talked incessantly, striving to buoy up his spirits with a constant stream of stories and legends and songs. At first, his efforts pleased the riders, appeased their deepening, hungry gloom like treasure-berries of entertainment. But the Questers were on their way toward the bleak, black prospect of Drool Rockworm, crouched like a bane in the catacombs of Mount Thunder. By the fourth day from Roamsedge Ford, Covenant felt that he was drowning in Giantish talk; and the voices of the warriors when they sang sounded more pleading than confident- like whistling against inexorable night.

With the Ramen to help him, Prothall found rapid ways over the rough terrain. Long after sunset on that fourth day when the growing moon stood high and baleful in the night sky- the Quest made a weary camp on the edge of Landsdrop.

The next dawn, Covenant resisted the temptation to go and look over the great cliff. He wanted to catch a glimpse of the Lower Land, of the Spoiled Plains and Sarangrave Flat- regions which had filled Foamfollower's talk in the past days. But he had no intention of exposing himself to an attack of vertigo. The fragile stability of his bargain did not cover gratuitous risks. So he remained in the camp when most of his companions went to gaze out over Landsdrop. But later, as the company rode north within a stone's throw of the edge, he asked Lord Mhoram to tell him about the great cliff.

“Ah, Landsdrop,” Mhoram responded quietly. “There is talk, unfounded even in the oldest legends, that the cleft of Landsdrop was caused by the sacrilege which buried immense banes under Mount Thunder's roots. In a cataclysm that shook its very heart, the Earth heaved with revulsion at the evils it was forced to contain. And the force of that dismay broke the Upper Land from the Lower, lifted it toward the sky. So this cliff reaches from deep in the Southron Range, past the Fall of the River Landrider, through the heart of Mount Thunder, at least half a thousand leagues into the mapless winter of the Northron Climbs. It varies in height from place to place. But it stands across all the Land, and does not allow us to forget.”

The Lord's rough voice only sharpened Covenant's anxiety. As the company rode, he held his gaze away to the west, trusting the wilderland to anchor him against his instinctive fear of heights.

Before noon, the weather changed. Without warning, a sharp wind bristling with grim, preternatural associations sprang out of the north. In moments, black clouds seethed across the sky. Lightning ripped the air; thunder pounded like a crushing of boulders. Then, out of the bawling sky, rain struck like a paroxysm of rage- hit with savage force until it stung. The horses lowered their heads as if they were wincing. Torrents battered the riders, drenched, blinded them. Manethrall Lithe sent her Cords scouting ahead to keep the company from plunging over Landsdrop. Prothall raised his staff with bright fire flaring at its tip to help keep his companions from losing each other. They huddled together, and the Bloodguard positioned the Ranyhyn around them to bear the brunt of the attack.

In the white revelations of the lightning, Prothall's flare appeared dim and frail, and thunder detonated hugely over it as if exploding at the touch of folly. Covenant crouched low on Dura's back, flinched away from the lightning as if the sky were stone which the thunder shattered. He could not see the Cords, did not know what was happening around him; he was constantly afraid that Dura's next step would take him over the cliff. He clenched his eyes to Prothall's flame as if it could keep him from being lost.

The skill and simple toughness of the Ramen preserved the company, kept it moving toward Mount Thunder. But the journey seemed like wandering in the collapse of the heavens. The riders could only be sure of their direction because they were always forcing their way into the maw of the storm. The wind flailed the rain at their faces until their eyes felt lacerated and their cheeks shredded. And the cold drenching stiffened their limbs, paralyzed them slowly like the rigor of death. But they went on as if they were trying to beat down a wall of stone with their foreheads.

For two full days, they pushed onward- felt themselves crumbling under the onslaught of the rain. But they knew neither day nor night, knew nothing but one continuous, pummelling, dark, savage, implacable storm. They rode until they were exhausted- rested on their feet knee-deep in water and mud, gripping the reins of their horses- ate sopping morsels of food half warmed by
lillianrill
fires which Birinair struggled to keep half alive- counted themselves to be sure no one had been lost- and rode again until they were forced by exhaustion to stop again. At times, they felt that Prothall's wan blue flame alone sustained them. Then Lord Mhoram moved among the company. In the lurid lightning, his face appeared awash with water like a foundering wreck; but he went to each Quester, shouted through the howl of wind and rain, the devastating thunder, “Drool- storm- for us! But he- mistaken! Main force- passes- west! Take heard Augurs- for us!”

Covenant was too worn and cold to respond. But he heard the generous courage behind Mhoram's words. When the company started forward again, he squinted ahead toward Prothall's flame as if he were peering into a mystery.

The struggle went on, prolonged itself far beyond the point where it felt unendurable. In time, endurance itself became abstract- a mere concept, too impalpable to carry conviction. The lash and riot of the storm reduced the riders to raw, quivering flesh hardly able to cling to their mounts. But Prothall's fire burned on. At each new flash and blast, Covenant reeled in his seat. He wanted nothing in life but a chance to lie down in the mud. But Prothall's fire burned on. It was like a manacle, emprisoning the riders, dragging them forward. In the imminent madness of the torrents, Covenant gritted his gaze as if that manacle were precious to him.

Then they passed the boundary. It was as abrupt as if the wall against which they had thrown themselves like usurped titans had suddenly fallen into mud. Within ten stumbling heartbeats, the end of the storm blew over them, and they stood gasping in a sun-bright noon. They could hear the tumult rushing blindly away. Around them were the remains of the deluge- broken pools and streams and fens, thick mud like wreckage on the battle plain. And before them stood the great ravaged head of Mount Thunder: Gravin Threndor, Peak of the Fire-Lions.

For a long moment, it held them like an aegis of silence- grim, grave and august, like an outcropping of the Earth's heart. The Peak was north and slightly west of them. Taller than Kevin's Watch above the Upper Land, it seemed to kneel on the edge of the Sarangrave, with its elbows braced on the plateau and its head high over the cliff, fronting the sky in a strange attitude of pride and prayer; and it rose twelve thousand feet over the Defiles Course, which flowed eastward from its feet. Its sides from its crumpled foothills to the raw rock of its crown were bare, not cloaked or defended from storms, snows, besieging time by any trees or grasses, but instead wearing sheer, fragmented cliffs like facets, some as black as obsidian and others as grey as the ash of a granite fire- as if the stone of the Mount were too thick, too charged with power, to bear any gentle kind of life.

There, deep in the hulky chest of the mountain, was the destination of the Quest: Kiril Threndor, Heart of Thunder.

They were still ten leagues from the Peak, but the distance was deceptive. Already that scarred visage dominated the northern horizon; it confronted them over the rift of Landsdrop like an irrefusable demand. Mount Thunder! There Berek Halfhand had found his great revelation. There the Quest for the Staff of Law hoped to regain the future of the Land. And there Thomas Covenant sought release from the impossibility of his dreams. The company stared at the upraised rock as if it searched their hearts, asked them questions which they could not answer.

Then Quaan grinned fiercely, and said, “At least now we have been washed clean enough for such work.”

That incongruity cracked the trance which held the riders. Several of the warriors burst into laughter as if recoiling from the strain of the past two days, and most of the others chuckled, daring Drool or any enemy to believe that the storm had weakened them. Though nearly prostrated by the exertion of finding a path through the torrents on foot, the Ramen laughed as well, sharing a humour they did not fully understand.

Only Foamfollower did not respond. His eyes were fixed on Mount Thunder, and his brows overhung his gaze as if shielding it from something too bright or hot to be beheld directly.

The Questers found a relatively dry hillock on which to rest and eat, and feed their mounts; and Foamfollower went with them absently. While the company made itself as comfortable as possible for a time, he stood apart and gazed at the mountain as if he were reading secrets in its scored crevices and cliffs. Softly he sang to himself:

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.

High Lord Prothall let the company rest for as long as he dared in the open plain. Then he moved on again for the remainder of the afternoon, clinging to the edge of Landsdrop as if it were his only hope. Before the storm, Covenant had learned that the sole known entrance to the catacombs of Mount Thunder was through the western chasm of the Soulsease- Treacher's Gorge, the rocky maw which swallowed the river, only to spit it out again eastward on the Lower Land, transmogrified by hidden turbulent depths into the Defiles Course, a stream grey with the sludge and waste of the Wightwarrens. So Prothall's hope lay in his southeastern approach. He believed that by reaching Mount Thunder on the south and moving toward Treacher's Gorge from the east, the company could arrive unseen and unexpected at the Gorge's western exposure. But he took no unnecessary risks. Gravin Threndor stood perilously large against the sky, and seemed already to lean looming toward the company as if the Peak itself were bent to the shape of Drool's malice. He urged the tired Ramen to their best cunning in choosing a way along Landsdrop; and he kept the riders moving until after the sun had set.