He pulled himself up and took a deep breath. "We do not regret. For all our peril, this discovery may be the great moment of our age. But it may not altogether bless us."
In a low voice, Prothall added, "We raise no blame or doubt. How could any have known what we would find? But the doom of the Land is now doubly on our heads. If we are to defeat Lord Foul in the end, we must master powers for which we are not ready. So we learn hope and dismay from the same source. Do not mistake us-this risk we accept gladly. The mastery of Kevin's Lore is the goal of our lives. But we must make clear that there is risk. I see hope for the Land, but little for myself."
"Even that sight is dim," said Mhoram tightly. "It may be that Lord Foul has led us here so that we may be betrayed by powers we cannot control."
At this, Prothall looked sharply at Mhoram. Then, slowly, the High Lord nodded his agreement. But his face did not lose the relief, the lightening of its burdens, which his first sight of the Ward had given him. Under its influence, he looked equal to the stewardship of his age. Now the time of High Lord Prothall son of Dwillian would be well remembered-if the company survived its Quest. His resolve had a forward look as he closed the chest of the Second Ward; his movements were crisp and decisive. He gave the cask to Korik, who bound it to his bare back with strips of clingor, and covered it by knotting his tunic shut.
But Covenant looked at the remains of the brief structure of his own hope, collapsed like a child's toy house, and he did not know where to turn for new edifices. He felt vaguely that he had no solid ground on which to build them. He was too weak and tired to think about it. He stood leaning where he was for a long time, with his head bent as if he were trying to decipher the chart of his robe.
Despite the danger, the company rested and ate there in the tunnel. Prothall judged that remaining where they were for a time was as unpredictable as anything else they might do; so while the Bloodguard stood watch, he encouraged his companions to rest. Then he lay down, pillowed his head on his arms, and seemed at once to fall into deep sleep, so intensely calm and quiet that it looked more like preparation than repose. Following his example, most of the company let their eyes close, though they slept only fitfully. But Mhoram and Lithe remained watchful. He stared into the low fire as if he were searching for a vision, and she sat across from him with her shoulders hunched against the oppressive weight of the mountain -as unable to rest underground as if the lack of open sky and grasslands offended her Ramen blood. Reclining against the wall, Covenant regarded the two of them, and slept a little until the stain of his ring began to fade with moonset.
After that Prothall arose, awake and alert, and roused the company. As soon as everyone had eaten again, he put out the campfire. In its place, he lit one of the lillianrill torches. It guttered and jumped dangerously in the thick air, but he used it rather than his staff to light the tunnel. Soon the Quest was marching again. Helpless to do otherwise, they left their dead lying on the stone of the Ward chamber. It was the only tribute they could give Birinair and the slain warriors. Again they went into darkness, led by the High Lord through interminable, black, labyrinthian passages in the deep rock of Mount Thunder. The air became thicker, hotter, deader. In spite of occasional ascents, their main progress was downward, toward the bottomless roots of the mountain, closer with every unseen, unmeasured league toward immense, buried, slumbering, grim ills, the terrible bones of the Earth. On and on they walked as if they were amazed by darkness, irremediable night. They made their way in hard silence, as if their lips were stiff with resisted sobs. They could not see. It affected them like a bereavement.
As they approached the working heart of the Wightwarrens, certain sounds became louder, more distinct -the battering of anvils, the groaning of furnaces, gasps of anguish. From time to time they crossed blasts of hot fetid air like forced ventilation for charnel pits. And a new noise crept into their awareness-a sound of bottomless boiling. For a long while, they drew nearer to this deep moil without gaining any hint of what it was.
Later they passed its source. Their path lay along the lip of a huge cavern. The walls were lit luridly by a seething orange sea of rocklight. Far below them was a lake of molten stone.
After the long darkness of their trek, the bright light hurt their eyes. The rising acrid heat of the lake snatched at them as if it were trying to pluck them from their perch. The deep, boiling sound thrummed in the air. Great gouts of magma spouted toward the ceiling, then fell back into the lake like crumbling towers.
Vaguely, Covenant heard someone say, "The Demondim in the days of High Lord Loric discarded their failed breeding efforts here. It is said that the loathing of the Demondim-and of the Viles who sired them-for their own forms surpassed all restraint. It led them to the spawning which made both ur-viles and Waynhim. And it drove them to cast all their weak and faulty into such pits as this-so strongly did they abhor their unseen eyelessness."
Groaning, he turned his face to the wall, and crept past the cavern into the passage beyond it. When he dropped his hands from the support of the stone, his fingers twitched at his sides as if he were testing the sides of a casket.
Prothall chose to rest there, just beyond the cavern of rocklight. The company ate a quick, cold meal, then pressed on again into darkness. From this passage, they took two turns, went up a long slope, and at length found themselves walking a ledge in a fault. Its crevice fell away to their left. Covenant made his way absently, shaking his head in an effort to clear his thoughts. Ur-viles reeled across his brain like images of self-hatred, premonitions. Was he doomed to see himself even in such creatures as that? No. He gritted his teeth. No. In the light of remembered bursts of lava, he began to fear that he had already missed his chance-his chance to fall
In time, fatigue came back over him. Prothall called a rest halt on the ledge, and Covenant surprised himself nearly falling asleep that close to a crevice. But the High Lord was pushing toward his goal now, and did not let the company rest long. With his guttering torch, he led the Quest forward again, through darkness into darkness.
As the trek dragged on, their moment-by-moment caution began to slip. The full of the moon was coming, and somewhere ahead Drool was preparing for them. Prothall moved as if he were eager for the last test, and led them along the ledge at a stiff pace. As a result, the lone ur-vile took them all by surprise.
It had hidden itself in a thin fissure in the wall of the crevice. When Covenant passed it, it sprang out at him, threw its weight against his chest. Its roynish, eyeless face was blank with ferocity. As it struck him, it grappled for his left hand.
The force of the attack knocked him backward toward the crevice. For one flicker of time, he was not aware of that danger. The ur-vile consumed his attention. It pulled his hand close to its face, sniffed wetly over his fingers as if searching for something, then tried to jam his ring finger into its ragged mouth.
He staggered back one more step; his foot left the ledge. In that instant, he realized the hungry fall under him. Instinctively, he closed his fist against the ur-vile and ignored it. Clinging to his staff with all the strength of his halfhand, he thrust its end toward Bannor. The Bloodguard was already reaching for him.
Bannor caught hold of the staff.
For one slivered moment, Covenant kept his grip.
But the full weight of the ur-vile hung on his left arm. His hold tore loose from the staff. With the creature struggling to bite off his ring, he plunged into the crevice.
Before he could shriek his terror, a force like a boulder struck him, knocked the air from his lungs, left him gasping sickly as he plummeted. With his chest constricted and retching, unable to cry out, he lost consciousness.
When he roused himself after the impact, he was struggling for air against a faceful of dirt. He lay head down on a steep slope of shale and loam and refuse, and the slide caused by his landing had covered his face. For a long moment, he could not move except to gag and cough. His efforts shook him without freeing him.
> Then, with a shuddering exertion, he rolled over, thrust up his head. He coughed up a gout of dirt, and found that he could breathe. But he still could not see. The fact took a moment to penetrate his awareness. He checked his face, found that his eyes were uncovered and open. But they perceived nothing except an utter and desolate darkness. It was as if he were blind with panic-as if his optic nerves were numb with terror.
For a time he did panic. Without sight, he felt the empty air suck at him as if he were drowning in quicksand. The night beat about him on naked wings like vultures dropping toward dead meat.
His heart beat out heavy jolts of fear. He cowered there on his knees, abandoned, bereft of eyes and light and mind by the extremity of his dread, and his breath whimpered in his throat. But as the first rush of his panic passed, he recognized it. Fear-it was an emotion he understood, a part of the condition of his existence. And his heart went on beating. Lurching as if wounded, it still kept up his life.
Suddenly, convulsively, he raised his fists and struck at the shale on either side of his head, pounded to the rhythm of his pulse as if he were trying to beat rationality out of the dirt. No! No! I am going to survive!
The assertion steadied him. Survive! He was a leper, accustomed to fear. He knew how to deal with it. Discipline discipline.
He pressed his hands over his eyeballs; spots of color jerked across the black. He was not blind. He was seeing darkness. He had fallen away from the only light in the catacombs; of course he could not see.
Hell and blood.
Instinctively, he rubbed his hands, winced at the bruises he had given himself.
Discipline.
He was alone-alone- Lightless somewhere on the bottom of a ledge of the crevice long leagues from the nearest open sky. Without help, friends, rescue, for him the outside of the mountain was as unattainable
as if it had ceased to exist. Escape itself was unattainable unless
Discipline.
-unless he found some way to die.
Hellfire!
Thirst. Hunger. Injury-loss of blood. He iterated the possibilities as if he were going through a VSE. He might fall prey to some dark-bred bane. Might stumble over a more fatal precipice. Madness, yes. It would be as easy as leprosy.
Midnight wings beat about his ears, reeled vertiginously across the blind blackscape. His hands groped unconsciously around his head, seeking some way to defend himself.
Damnation!
None of this is happening to me.
Discipline!
A fetal fancy came over him. He caught hold of it as if it were a vision. Yes! Quickly, he changed his position so that he was sitting on the shale slope. He fumbled over his belt until he found Atiaran's knife. Poising it carefully in his halffingerless grip, he began to shave.
Without water or a mirror, he was perilously close to slitting his throat, and the dryness of his beard caused him pain as if he were using the knife to dredge his face into a new shape. But this risk, this pain, was part of him; there was nothing impossible about, it. If he cut himself, the dirt on his skin would make infection almost instantaneous. It calmed him like a demonstration of his identity.
In that way, he made the darkness draw back, withhold its talons.
When he was done, he mustered his resolution for an exploration of his situation. He wanted to know what kind of place he was in. Carefully, tentatively, he began searching away from the slopes on his hands and knees.
Before he had moved three feet across flat stone, he found a body. The flesh yielded as if it had not been dead long, but its chest was cold and slick, and his hand came back wet, smelling of rotten blood
He recoiled to the slope, gritted himself into motionlessness while his lungs heaved loudly and his knees trembled. The ur-vile, the ur-vile that had attacked him. Broken by the fall. He wanted to move, but could not. The shock of discovery froze him like a sudden opening of dangerous doors; he felt surrounded by perils which he could not name. How had that creature known to attack him? Could it actually smell white gold?
Then his ring began to gleam. The bloody radiation transformed it into a band of dull fire about his wedding finger, a crimson fetter. But it shed no light-did not even enable him to see the digit on which it hung. It shone balefully in front of him, exposed him to any eyes that were hidden in the dark, but it gave him nothing but dread.
He could not forget what it meant. Drool's bloody moon was rising full over the Land.
It made him quail against the shale slope. He had a gagging sensation in his throat, as if he were being force-fed terror. Even the uncontrollable wheeze of his respiration seemed to mark him for attack by claws and fangs so invisible in the darkness that he could not visualize them. He was alone, helpless, abject.
Unless he found some way to make use of the power of his ring.
He fell back in revulsion from that thought the instant it crossed his mind. No! Never! He was a leper; his capacity for survival depended-on a complete recognition, acceptance, of his essential impotence. That was the law of leprosy. Nothing could be as fatal to him-nothing could destroy him body and mind as painfully-as the illusion of power. Power in a dream. And before he died he would become as fetid and deformed as that man he had met in the leprosarium.
No!
Better to kill himself outright. Anything would be better.
He did not know how long he spun giddily before he heard a low noise in the darkness-distant, slippery and ominous, as if the surrounding midnight had begun breathing softly through its teeth. It stunned
him like a blow to the heart. Flinching in blind fear, he tried to fend it off. Slowly, it grew clearer-a quiet, susurrus sound like a gritted exhalation from many throats. It infested the air like vermin, made his flesh crawl.
They were coming for him. They knew where he was because of his ring, and they were coming for him.
He had a quick vision of a Waynhim with an iron spike through its chest. He clapped his right hand over his ring. But he knew that was futile as soon as he did it. Frenetically, he began searching over the shale for some kind of weapon. Then he remembered his knife. It felt too weightless to help him. But he gripped it, and went on hunting with his right hand, hardly knowing what he sought.
For a long moment, he fumbled around him, regardless of the noise he made. Then his fingers found his staff. Bannor must have dropped it, and it had fallen near him.
The susurration drew nearer. It was the sound of many bare feet sliding over stone. They were coming for him.
The staff! it was a Hirebrand's staff. Baradakas had given it to him. In the hour of darkness, remember the Hirebrand's staff. If he could light it.
But how?
The black air loomed with enemies. Their steps seemed to slide toward him from above.
How? he cried desperately, trying to make the staff catch fire by sheer force of will. Baradakas!
Still the feet came closer. He could hear hoarse breathing behind their sibilant approach.
It had burned for him at the Celebration of Spring. Shaking with haste, he pressed the end of the staff to his bloodembered ring. At once, red flame blossomed on the wood, turned pale orange and yellow, flared up brightly. The sudden light dazzled him, but he leaped to his feet and held the staff over his head.
He was standing at the bottom of a long slope which filled half the floor of the crevice. This loose piled shale had saved his life by giving under the impact of his fall, rolling him down instead of holding him where he hit. Before and behind him, the crevice stretched upward far beyond the reach of his flame. Nearby, the ur-vile lay twisted on its back, its black skin wet with blood.
Shuffling purposefully toward him along the crevice floor was a disjointed company of Cavewights.
They were still thirty yards away, but even at that distance, he was surprised by their appearance. They did not look like other Cavewights he had seen. The difference was not only in costume, though these creatures were ornately and garishly caparisoned like a roya
l cadre, elite and obscene. They were physically different. They were old-old prematurely, unnaturally. Their red eyes were hooded, and their long limbs bent as if the bones had been warped in a short time. Their heads sagged on necks that still looked thick enough to be strong and erect. Their heavy, spatulate hands trembled as if with palsy. Together, they reeked of ill, of victimization. But they came forward with clenched determination, as if they had been promised the peace of death when this last task was done.
Shaking off his surprise, he brandished his staff threateningly. "Don't touch me!" he hissed through his teeth. "Back off! I made a bargain-!"
The Cavewights gave no sign that they had heard. But they did not attack him. When they were almost within his reach, they spread out on both sides, awkwardly encircled him. Then, by giving way on one side and closing toward him on the other, they herded him in the direction from which they had come.
As soon as he understood that they wished to take him someplace without a fight, he began to cooperate. He knew intuitively where they were going. So through their tortuous herding he moved slowly along the crevice until he reached a stair in the left wall. It was a rude way, roughly hacked out of the rock, but it was wide enough for several Cavewights to climb abreast. He was able to control his vertigo by staying near the wall, away from the crevice.
They ascended for several hundred feet before they reached an opening in the wall. Though the stairs continued upward, the Cavewights steered him through this opening. He found himself in a narrow tunnel with a glow of rocklight at its end. The creatures marched him more briskly now, as if they were hurrying him toward a scaffold.
Then a wash of heat and a stink of brimstone poured over him. He stepped out of the tunnel into Kiril Threndor.
He recognized the burnished stone gleam of the faceted walls, the fetid stench like sulfur consuming rotten flesh, the several entrances, the burning dance of light on the clustered stalactites high overhead. It was all as vivid to him as if it had just been translated from a nightmare. The Cavewights ushered him into the chamber, then stood behind him to block the entrance.