The first doorway led to a wide hall large enough for scores of Giants. But the second, some distance farther along the face of the city, was shut. It had been closed for ages; all the cracks and joints around the architrave were sealed by salt. His instincts ran ahead of his mind. For reasons he could not have named, he barked to Brinn, “Get this open. I want to see what’s inside.”
Brian moved to obey; but the salt prevented him from obtaining a grip.
At once, Seadreamer joined him and began scraping the crust away like a man who could not stand closed doors, secrets. Soon he and Brinn were able to gain a purchase for their fingers along the edge of the stone. With an abrupt wrench, they swung the door outward.
Air which had been tombed for so long that it no longer held any taint of must or corruption spilled through the opening.
Within was a private living chamber. For a moment, dimness obscured it. But as Covenant’s eyes adjusted, he made out a dark form sitting upright and rigid in a chair beside the hearth.
Mummified by dead air and time and subtle salt, a Giant.
His hands crushed the arms of the chair, perpetuating forever his final agony. Splinters of old stone still jutted between his fingers.
His forehead above his vacant eye-sockets was gone. The top of his head was gone. His skull was empty, as if his brain had exploded, tearing away half his cranium.
Hellfire!
“It was as the old tellers have said.” Brinn sounded like the dead air. “Thus they were slain by the Giant-Raver. Unresisting in their homes.”
Hell and blood!
Trembling Seadreamer moved forward. “Seadreamer,” the First said softly from the doorway, warning him. He did not stop. He touched the dead Giant’s hand, tried to unclose those rigid fingers. But the ancient flesh became dust in his grasp and sifted like silence to the floor.
A spasm convulsed his face. For an instant, his eyes glared madly. His fists bunched at the sides of his head, as if he were trying to fight back against the Earth-Sight. Then he whirled and surged toward Covenant as if he meant to wrest the tale of the Unhomed from Covenant by force.
“Giant!”
The First’s command struck Seadreamer. He veered aside, lurched to press himself against the wall, struggling for self-mastery.
Shouts that Covenant could not still went on in his head: curses that had no meaning. He forced his way from the room, hastened to continue his descent toward the base of Coercri.
He reached the flat headrock of the piers as the terns were settling to roost for the night and the last pink of sunset was fading from the Sea. The waves gathered darkly as they climbed the levee, then broke into froth and phosphorescence against the stone. Coercri loomed above him; with the sun behind it, it seemed to impend toward the Sea as if it were about to fall.
He could barely discern the features of his companions. Linden, the Giants, Sunder and Hollian, the Haruchai, even Vain—they were night and judgment to him, a faceless jury assembled to witness the crisis of his struggle with the past, with memory and power, and to pronounce doom. He knew what would happen as if he had foreseen it with his guts, though his mind was too lost in passion to recognize anything except his own need. He had made promises—He seemed to hear the First saying before she spoke, “Now, Thomas Covenant. The time has come. At your behest, we have beheld The Grieve. Now we must have the story of our lost kinfolk. There can be neither joy nor decision for us until we have heard the tale.”
The water tumbled its rhythm against the levee, echoing her salt pain. He answered without listening to himself, “Start a fire. A big one.” He knew what the Giants would do when they heard what they wanted. He knew what he would do.
The Haruchai obeyed. With brands they had garnered from Seareach, and Seadreamer’s firepot, they started a blaze near the base of the piers, then brought driftwood to stoke the flames. Soon the fire was as tall as Giants, and shadows danced like memories across the ramparts.
Now Covenant could see. Sunder and Hollian held back their apprehension sternly. Linden watched him as if she feared he had fallen over the edge of sanity. The faces of the Giants were suffused with firelight and waiting, with hunger for any anodyne. Reflecting flames, the flat countenances of the Haruchai looked inviolate and ready, as pure as the high mountains where they made their homes. And Vain—Vain stood black against the surrounding night, and revealed nothing.
But none of that mattered to Covenant. The uselessness of his own cursing did not matter. Only the fire held any meaning; only Coercri, and the lorn reiteration of the waves. He could see Foamfollower in the flames. Words which he had suppressed for long days of dread and uncertainty came over him like a creed, and he began to speak.
He told what he had learned about the Unhomed, striving to heal their slaughter by relating their story.
Joy is in the ears that hear.
Foamfollower! Did you let your people die because you knew I was going to need you?
The night completed itself about him as he spoke, spared only by stars from being as black as The Grieve. Firelight could not ease the dark of the city or the dark of his heart. Nothing but the surge of the Sea—rise and fall, dirge and mourning—touched him as he offered their story to the Dead.
Fully, formally, omitting nothing, he described how the Giants had come to Seareach through their broken wandering. He told how Damelon had welcomed the Unhomed to the Land and had foretold that their bereavement would end when three sons were born to them, brothers of one birth. And he spoke about the fealty and friendship which had bloomed between the Giants and the Council, giving comfort and succor to both; about the high Giantish gratitude and skill which had formed great Revelstone for the Lords; about the concern which had led Kevin to provide for the safety of the Giants before he kept his mad tryst with Lord Foul and invoked the Ritual of Desecration; about the loyalty which brought the Giants back to the Land after the Desecration, bearing with them the First Ward of Kevin’s Lore so that the new Lords could learn the Earthpower anew. These things Covenant detailed as they had been told to him.
But then Saltheart Foamfollower entered his story, riding against the current of the Soulsease toward Revelstone to tell the Lords about the birth of three sons. That had been a time of hope for the Unhomed, a time for the building of new ships and the sharing of gladness. After giving his aid to the Quest for the Staff of Law, Foamfollower had returned to Seareach; and the Giants had begun to prepare for the journey Home.
At first, all had gone well. But forty years later a silence fell over Seareach. The Lords were confronted with the army of the Despiser and the power of the Illearth Stone. Their need was sore, and they did not know what had happened to the Giants. Therefore Korik’s mission was sent to Coercri with the Lords Hyrim and Shetra, to give and ask whatever aid was possible.
The few Bloodguard who survived brought back the same tale which Foamfollower later told Covenant.
And he related it now as if it were the inassuageable threnody of the Sea. His eyes were full of firelight, blind to his companions. He heard nothing except the breakers in the levee and his own voice. Deep within himself, he waited for the crisis, knowing it would come, not knowing what form it would take.
For doom had befallen the three brothers: a fate more terrible to the Giants than any mere death or loss of Home. The three had been captured by Lord Foul, imprisoned by the might of the Illearth Stone, mastered by Ravers. They became the mightiest servants of the Despiser. And one of them came to The Grieve.
Foamfollower’s words echoed in Covenant. He used them without knowing what they would call forth. “Fidelity,” the Giant had said. “Fidelity was our only reply to our extinction. We could not have borne our decline if we had not taken pride.
“So my people were filled with horror when they saw their pride riven—torn from them like rotten sails in the wind. They saw the portent of their hope of Home—the three brothers—changed from fidelity to the most potent ill by one small stroke of the Des
piser’s evil. Who in the Land could hope to stand against a Giant-Raver? Thus the Unhomed became the means to destroy that to which they had held themselves true. And in horror at the naught of their fidelity, their folly practiced through long centuries of pride, they were transfixed. Their revulsion left no room in them for thought or resistance or choice. Rather than behold the cost of their failure—rather than risk the chance that more of them would be made Soulcrusher’s servants—they elected to be slain.”
Foamfollower’s voice went on in Covenant’s mind, giving him words. “They put away their tools.”
But a change had come over the night. The air grew taut. The sound of the waves was muffled by the concentration of the atmosphere. Strange forces roused themselves within the city.
“And banked their fires.”
The ramparts teemed with shadows, and the shadows began to take form. Light as eldritch and elusive as sea phosphorescence cast rumors of movement up and down the ways of Coercri.
“And made ready their homes.”
Glimpses which resembled something Covenant had seen before flickered in the rooms and solidified, shedding a pale glow like warm pearls. Tall ghosts of nacre and dismay began to flow along the passages.
“As if in preparation for departure.”
The Dead of The Grieve had come to haunt the night.
For one mute moment, he did not comprehend. His companions stood across the fire from him, watching the specters; and their shadows denounced him from the face of Coercri. Was it true after all that Foamfollower had deserted his people for Covenant’s sake? That Lord Foul’s sole reason for destroying the Unhomed was to drive him, Thomas Covenant, into despair?
Then his crisis broke over him at last, and he understood. The Dead had taken on definition as if it were the flesh of life, had drifted like a masque of distress to the places which had been their homes. And there, high on the southmost rampart of The Grieve, came the Giant-Raver to appall them.
He shone a lurid green, and his right fist clenched a steaming image of emerald, dead echo of the Illearth Stone. With a deliberate hunger which belied his swiftness, he approached the nearest Giant. She made no effort to escape or resist. The Raver’s fist and Stone passed into her skull, into her mind; and both were torn away with a flash of power.
In silence and rapine, the Giant-Raver moved to his next victim.
The Dead of The Grieve were reenacting their butchery. The flow of their movements, the Giant-Raver’s progress from victim to victim, was as stately as a gavotte; and the flash of each reiterated death glared across the waves without noise or end, punctuating heinously the ghost dance of the Unhomed. Damned by the way they had abandoned the meaning of their lives, they could do nothing in the city which was their one great grave except repeat their doom, utter it again and again across the ages whenever Coercri held any eyes to behold their misery.
From room to room the Giant-Raver went, meting out his ancient crime. Soon a string of emeralds covered the highest rampart as each new blast pierced Covenant’s eyes, impaled his vision and his mind like the nails of crucifixion.
And as the masque went on, multiplying its atrocity, the living Giants broke, as he had known they would. His anguish had foreseen it all. Joy is in the ears that hear. Yes, but some tales could not be redeemed by the simple courage of the listener, by the willingness of an open heart. Death such as this, death piled cruelly upon death, century after century, required another kind of answer. In their desperation, the living Giants accepted the reply Covenant had provided for them.
Pitchwife led the way. With a sharp wail of aggrievement, he rushed to the bonfire and plunged his arms to the shoulders in among the blazing firewood. Flames slapped his face, bent his head back in a mute howl against the angle of his crippled chest.
Linden cried out. But the Haruchai understood, and did not move.
The First joined Pitchwife. Kneeling on the stone, she clamped her hands around a raging log and held it.
Seadreamer did not stop at the edge of the flames. Surging as if the Earth-Sight had deprived him of all restraint, he hurled his whole body into the fire, stood there with the blaze writhing about him like the utterance of his agony.
Caamora: the ritual fire of grief. Only in such savage physical hurt could the Giants find release and relief for the hurting of their souls.
Covenant had been waiting for this, anticipating and dreading it. Caamora. Fire. Foamfollower had walked selflessly into the magma of Hotash Slay and had emerged as the Pure One.
The prospect terrified him. But he had no other solution to the venom in his veins, to the power he could not master, had no other answer to the long blame of the past. The Dead repeated their doom in The Grieve above him, damned to die that way forever unless he could find some grace for them. Foamfollower had given his life gladly so that Covenant and the Land could live. Covenant began moving, advancing toward the fire.
Brinn and Hergrom opposed him. But then they saw the hope and ruin in his eyes. They stepped aside.
“Covenant!”
Linden came running toward him. But Cail caught her, held her back.
Heat shouted against Covenant’s face like the voice of his destiny; but he did not stop. He could not stop. Entranced and compelled, he rode the mourning of the Sea forward.
Into the fire.
At once, he became wild magic and grief, burning with an intense white flame that no other blaze could touch. Shining like the gem of the krill, he strode among the logs and embers to Seadreamer’s side. The Giant did not see him, was too far gone in agony to see him. Remembering Foamfollower’s pain, Covenant thrust at Seadreamer. Wild magic blasted the Giant from the fire, sent him sprawling across the cold stone.
Slowly Covenant looked around at his companions. They were distorted by the flames, gazing at him as if he were a ghoul. Linden’s appalled stare hurt him. Because he could not reply to her in any other way, he turned to his purpose.
He took hold of the wild magic, shaped it according to his will, so that it became his own ritual, an articulation of compassion and rage for all torment, all loss.
Burning he opened himself to the surrounding flames.
They rushed to incinerate him; but he was ready. He mastered the bonfire with argence, bent it to his command. Flame and power were projected outward together, so that the blaze lashed tremendously into the night.
He spread his arms to the city, stretched himself as if he yearned to embrace the whole of The Grieve.
In wild magic, white puissance without sound, he shouted: Come! This is the caamora! Come and be healed!
And they came. His might and his will interrupted the masque, broke the geas which locked the Dead in their weird damnation. Hearing him, they turned as if they had been waiting through all the long ages of their anguish for his call. In throngs and eagerness, they began flowing down the passages of Coercri.
Like a river, they swept out onto the headrock of the piers.
Toward the fire.
The Giant-Raver tried to pursue them. But the breaking of their eternal round seemed to break also his hold over them, break the spell of his maleficent glee. His form frayed as he moved, blurred until he was only a tingling green smear of memory across The Grieve—until he faded into the night, and was lost.
And the Dead continued toward the fire.
The Haruchai drew back, taking Linden and the Stonedownors with them. Pitchwife and the First went with aching bones to tend Seadreamer.
Vain did not move. He stood in the path of the Dead and watched Covenant’s immolation with gaiety in his eyes.
But the Dead passed around him, streamed forward. Need and hope shone through their pearl faces.
Reaching out to them as if they were all one, as if they were only Foamfollower in multiform guise, Covenant took them into his embrace, and wept white fire.
The wild magic struck pain into them, seared them the way a physical conflagration would have seared their bodies. Their forms we
nt rigid, jaws stretched, eyes stared—specters screaming in soul-anguish. But the screaming was also laughter.
And the laughter prevailed.
Covenant could not hold them. They came into his arms, but they had no bodies that he could hug. Nothing filled his embrace; no contact or benison restored him to himself. He might have been alone in the fire.
Yet the laughter stayed with him. It was glad mirth, joy and restitution which Foamfollower would have known how to share. It ran in his ears like the Sea and sustained him until everything else was gone—until his power was spent against the heavens, and the night closed over him like all the waters of the world.
TWENTY-SEVEN: Giantfriend
The next morning, the dromond Starfare’s Gem arrived in a gleam of white sails, as if it had been newly created from the sun’s reflection on the blue Sea. It hove into sight like a stone castle riding gallantly before the wind, beautifully both, swift and massive, matching the grace and strength of the Giants.
Covenant watched its approach from the cliff above Coercri. He sat far enough back from the edge to appease his fear of heights, but close enough to have a good view. Linden, Sunder, and Hollian were with him, though he had only asked for the company of the two Stonedownors. Brinn and Cail, Stell and Harn were there also. And Vain had followed Covenant or Linden up through The Grieve, though his blackness offered no explanation of why he had done so. Only Hergrom and Ceer remained below with the Giants.
Earlier Sunder had told Covenant how he had been saved when his power failed. Linden had watched him amid the blaze, reading his wild magic, gauging the limits of his endurance. One moment before the white flame had guttered and gone out, she had shouted a warning. Seadreamer had dashed into the bonfire and had emerged on the far side with Covenant in his arms, unharmed. Even Covenant’s clothing had not been singed.