Power That Preserves

  Power swarmed around Covenant like a thousand thousand mad wasps. Before him, the Despiser’s blank shadow grew horribly, swept upward larger and larger until it dwarfed Covenant, dwarfed Foamfollower, dwarfed the thronehall itself; it filled the air, the hall, the entire Creche. He felt himself plunging into the abyss of it. He cried out for help, but no help came. Like a stricken bird, he plummeted downward. The speed of his fall roared in his ears as if it were trying to suck him out of himself. He could sense the rock on which he would be shattered, unutterably far below him.

  In the void, an attar-laden voice breathed, “Worship me and I will save you.”

  Giddy terror-lust rushed up in him. A black whirlwind hurled him at the rock as if all the puissance of the heavens had come to smash him against the unbreakable granite of his fate. Despite screamed in his mind, demanding admittance, demanding like the suicidal paradox of vertigo to overwhelm him. But he clung to himself, refused. He was a leper; the Land was not real; this was not the way he was going to die.

  He clenched his fist on the ring with all the frail strength of his arm.

  At the crash of impact, pain detonated in his skull. Incandescent agony yowled and yammered through his head, shredded him like claws ferociously tearing the tissue of his brain. Foul rode the pain as if it were a tidal wave, striving to break down or climb over the seawall of his will. But he was too numb to break. His hands and feet were blind, frozen; his forehead was already inured to harm; and the black swelling in his lip was familiar to him. The green, ghastly cold could not bend the rigor of his bones. Like a dead man, he was stiff with resistance.

  Lord Foul tried to enter him, tried to merge with him. The offer was seductively sweet—a surcease from pain, a release from the long unrest which he had miscalled his life. But he was harnessed to himself in a way that allowed no turning aside, no surrender. He was Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and leper. He refused.

  Abruptly his pain fell into darkness. Harm, injury, crushing, assault—all turned to ashes and blew away on windless air. In their place came his own numbness, his irreparable lack of sensation. In the great, unlimited abyss, he found that he could see himself.

  He was standing nowhere, surrounded by nothing; he was staring as if in dumb incomprehension at his hands.

  At first they seemed normal. They were as gaunt as sticks, and the two missing digits of his right hand gave him a sense of loss, unwholeness, that made him groan. But his ring was intact; it hung inertly on his index finger, an argent circle as perfect and inescapable as if it had some meaning.

  But as he watched, dim purple spots began to appear on his hands-on his fingers, the backs of his knuckles, the heels of his palms. Slowly, they spread and started to suppurate; they bulged slightly like blisters, then opened to show abscesses under his skin. Fluid oozed from the sores as they grew and spread. Soon both his hands were covered with infection.

  They became gangrenous, putrescent; the cloying stench of live, rotten flesh poured from them like the effluvium of some gnawing fungus, noisome and cruel. And under the infection, the bones of his fingers began to gnarl. Unmarrowed, flawed by rot, stressed by tendons whose nerves had died, leaving them perpetually taut, perpetually clenched against each other, the bones twisted, broke, and froze at crooked angles. In the rot and the disease, his hands maimed themselves. And the black, sick swelling of gangrene began to eat its way up his wrists.

  The same pressures, the same fetid and uncontrollable tension of muscles and thews—bereft of volition by the rot in his nerves—bowed his forearms so that they hung grotesquely from his elbows. Then pus began to blossom like sweat from the abscessed pores of his upper arms. When he twitched his robe aside, he found that his legs were already contorted to the knees.

  The assault horrified him, buried him in misery and self-loathing. He was wearing his own future, the outcome of his illness—the destination of the road down which every leper fared who did not either kill himself or fight hard enough to stay alive. He was seeing the very thing which had first determined him to survive, all those long months ago in the leprosarium, but now it was upon him, virulent and immedicable. His leprosy was in full rank flower, and he had nothing left for which to fight.

  Nevertheless he was on his home ground. He knew leprosy with the intimacy of a lover; he knew that it could not happen so swiftly, so completely. It was not real. And it was not all of him. This heinous and putrescent gnawing was not the sum total of his being. Despite what the doctors said—despite what he saw in himself—he was more than that, more than just a leper.

  No, Foul! he panted bitterly. It’s not that easy.

  “Tom. Tom!” a stricken voice cried. It was familiar to him—a voice as known and beloved as health. “Give it up. Don’t you see what you’re doing to us?”

  He looked up, and saw Joan standing before him. She held their infant son, Roger, in her hands, so that the child was half extended like an offering toward him. Both of them appeared just as they had been when he had last seen them, so long ago; Joan had the same look of torn grief in her face, the expression that begged him to understand why she had already decided to divorce him. But she was inexplicably naked. His heart wept in him when he saw the lost love of her loins, the unwillingness of her breasts, the denied treasure of her face.

  As he gazed at her, purple stains began to show through the warmth of her skin. Abscesses suppurated on her breasts; sickness oozed from her nipples like milk.

  Roger was puling pathetically in her hands. When he turned his helpless infant head toward his father, Covenant saw that his eyes were already glazed and cataractal, half blinded by leprosy. Two dim magenta spots tainted his cheeks.

  Foul! Covenant shrieked. Damn you!

  Then he saw other figures pressing forward behind Joan. Mhoram was there; Lena and Atiaran were there; Bannor and Hile Troy were there. Mhoram’s whole face had fallen into yellow rot and running chancrous sores; his eyes cried out through the infection as if they were drowning in a quagmire of atrocious wrong. All Lena’s hair had fallen out, and her bald scalp bristled with tubercular nodules. Atiaran’s eyes were drowning in milky blindness. The grotesque gnarling of Banner’s limbs entirely crippled him. Troy’s eyeless face was one puckered mass of gangrene, as if the very brain within his skull were festering.

  And behind these figures stood more of the people Covenant had known in the Land. All were mortally ill, rife and hideous with leprosy. And behind them crowded multitudes more, numberless victims—all the people of the Land stricken and destitute, abominable to themselves, as ruined as if Covenant had brought a plague of absolute virulence among them.

  At the sight of them, he erupted. Fury at their travail spouted up in him like lava. Volcanic anger, so long buried under the weight of his complex ordeal, sent livid, fiery passion geysering into the void.

  Foul! he screamed. Foul! You can’t do this!

  “I will do it,” came the mocking reply. “I am doing it.”

  Stop it!

  “Give me the ring.”

  Never!

  “Then enjoy what you have brought to pass. Behold! I have given you companions. The solitary leper has remade the world in his own image, so that he will not be alone.”

  I won’t let you!

  The Despiser laughed sardonically. “You will aid me before you die.”

  “Never! Damn you! Never!”

  Fury exalted Covenant-fury as hot as magma. A rage for lepers carried him beyond all his limits. He took one last look at the victims thronging innumerably before him. Then he began to struggle for freedom like a newborn man fighting his way out of an old skin.

  He seemed to be standing in the nowhere nothingness of the abyss, but he knew that his physical body still knelt on the floor of the thronehall—With a savage effort of will, he disregarded all sensory impressions, all appearances that prevented him from perceiving where he was. Trembling, jerking awkwardly, he levered his gaunt frame to its feet. The eyes of his body were blind, still caug
ht in Lord Foul’s control, but he grated fiercely, “I see you, Foul.” He did not need eyes. He could sense with the nerves of his stiff cheeks the emanations of power around him.

  He took three lumbering, tottering steps, and felt Foul suddenly surge toward him, rush to stop him. Before the Despiser could reach him, he raised his hands and fell fists-first at the Illearth Stone.

  The instant his wedding band struck the Stone, a hurricane of might exploded in his hand. Gales of green and white fire blasted through the air, shattered it like a bayamo. The veil of Lord Foul’s assault was shredded in a moment and blown away. Covenant found himself lying on the floor with a tornado of power gyring upward from his halfhand.

  He heaved to his feet. With one flex of his arms, he freed his wrists as if the shackles were a skein of lies.

  Foul’s penumbral shadow crouched in battle-readiness across the Stone from him. The Despiser brandished his carious eyes as if he were frantic to drive them into Covenant’s heart. “Fool!” he howled shrilly. “Groveler! It is I who rule here! Alone I am your rightful master—and I command the Stone! I will destroy you. You will not so much as touch me!”

  As he yelled, he threw out a flare of force which struck Covenant’s hand, embedded itself deep in the core of his ring. Amid its raging gale, the white gold was altered. Cold ill soaked into the metal, forced itself into the ring until all the argent had been violated by green. Again Covenant felt himself falling out of the thronehall.

  Without transition, he found himself on Kevin’s Watch. He stood on the stone platform like a titan, and with his malefic band he alone levied a new Ritual of Desecration upon the Land. All health withered before him. Great Gilden trees splintered and broke. Flowers died. Aliantha grew barren and became dust. Soil turned to sand. Rivers ran dry. Stonedowns and Woodhelvens were overthrown. Starvation and homelessness slew every shape of life that walked upon the earth. He was the Lord of a ruin more absolute than any other, a desolation utterly irreparable.

  Never!

  With one violent thrust of his will, he struck the green from his ring and returned to the thronehall. His wedding band was immaculate silver, and the slashing wind of its power was wild beyond all emerald mastery.

  He almost laughed. The Stone could not corrupt him; he was already as fundamentally diseased as any corruption could make him.

  To the Despiser, he rasped, “You’ve had your chance. You’ve used your filthy power. Now it’s my turn. You can’t stop me. You’ve broken too many Laws. And I’m outside the Law. It doesn’t control wild magic, it doesn’t control me. But it was the only thing that might have stopped me. You could have used it against me. Now it’s just me—it’s my will that makes the difference.” He was panting heavily; he could not find enough air to support the extremity of his passion. “I’m a leper, Foul. I can stand anything.”

  At once, the Despiser attacked him. Foul put his hands on the Illearth Stone, placed his power on the pulsing heart of its violence. He sent green might raving at Covenant.

  It fell on him like the collapse of a mountain, piled onto him like tons of wrecked stone. At first he could not focus the ring on it, and it drove him staggering backward. But then he found his error. He had tried to use the wild magic like a tool or weapon, something which could be wielded. But High Lord Mhoram had told him, You are the white gold. It was not a thing to be commanded, employed well or ill as skill or awkwardness allowed. Now that it was awake, it was a part of him, an expression of himself. He did not need to focus it, aim it; bone and blood, it arose from his passion.

  With a shout, he threw back the attack, shattered it into a million droplets of rank fever.

  Again Lord Foul struck. Power that fried the air between them sprang at Covenant, strove to interrupt the white, windless gale of the ring. Their conflict coruscated through the thronehall like a mad gibberish of lightning, green and white blasting, battering, devouring each other like all the storms of the world gone insane.

  Its sheer immensity daunted Covenant, tried like a landslide to sweep the feet of his resolve from under him. He was unacquainted with power, unadept at combat. But his rage for lepers, for the Land, for the victims of Despite, kept him upright. And his Unbelief enabled him. He knew more completely than any native of the Land could have known that Lord Foul was not unbeatable. In this manifestation, Despite had no absolute reality of existence. The people of the Land would have failed in the face of Despite because they were convinced of it. Covenant was not. He was not overwhelmed; he did not believe that he had to fail. Lord Foul was only an externalized part of himself—not an immortal, not a god. Triumph was possible.

  So he threw himself heart and soul and blood and bone into the battle. He did not think of defeat; the personal cost was irrelevant. Lord Foul beat him back until he was pressed to the wall at Foamfollower’s side. The savagery of the Stone made a holocaust around him, tore every last flicker of warmth from the air, shot great lurid icicles of hatred at him. But he did not falter. The wild magic was passionate and unfathomable, as high as Time and as deep as Earth—raw power limited only by the limits of his will. And his will was growing, raising its head, blossoming on the rich sap of rage. Moment by moment, he was becoming equal to the Despiser’s attack.

  Soon he was able to move. He forged away from the wall, waded like a strong man through the tempest toward his enemy. White and green blasts scalded the atmosphere; detonations of savage lightning shattered against each other. Lord Foul’s fiery cold and Covenant’s gale tore at each other’s throats, rent each other, renewed themselves and tore again. In the virulence of the battle, Covenant thought that Ridjeck Thome would surely come crashing down. But the Creche stood; the thronehall stood. Only Covenant and Lord Foul shook in the thunderous silence of the power storm.

  Abruptly he succeeded in driving Lord Foul back from the Stone. At once, his own fire blazed still higher. Without direct contact, the Despiser’s control over his emerald bane was less perfect. His exertions became more frenzied, erratic. Unmastered force rocked the throne, tore ragged hunks of stone from the ceiling, cracked the floor. He was screaming now in a language Covenant could not understand.

  The Unbeliever grabbed his opportunity. He moved forward, rained furious gouts and bolts of wild magic at the Despiser, then suddenly began to form a wall of might between Lord Foul and the Stone. Lord Foul shrieked, tried frantically to regain the Stone. But he was too late. In an instant, Covenant’s force had surrounded Lord Foul.

  With all the rage of his will, he pressed his advantage. He pounced like a hawk, clenched power around the Despiser. Whitely, brutally, he began to penetrate the penumbra.

  Lord Foul’s aura resisted with shrieks and showers of sparks. It was tough, obdurate; it shed Covenant’s feral bolts as if they were mere show, incandescent child’s play. But he refused to be denied. The dazzling of his wild magic flung shafts and quarrels of might at the emerald glister of the aura until one prodigious blast pierced it.

  It ruptured with a shock which jarred the thronehall like an earth tremor. Waves of concussion pealed at Covenant’s head, hammered at his sore and feverish skull. But he clung to his power, did not let his will wince.

  The whole penumbra burst into flame like a skin of green tinder, and as it burned it tore, peeled away, fell in hot shreds and tatters to the floor.

  Within Covenant’s clench, Lord Foul the Despiser began to appear.

  By faint degrees, he became material, drifted from corporeal absence to presence. Perfectly molded limbs, as pure as alabaster, grew slowly visible—an old, grand, leonine head, magisterially crowned and bearded with flowing white hair—an enrobed, dignified trunk, broad and solid with strength. Only his eyes showed no change, no stern, impressive surge of incarnation; they lashed constantly at Covenant like fangs wet with venom.

  When he was fully present, Lord Foul folded his arms on his chest and said harshly, “Now you do in truth see me, groveler.” His tone gave no hint of fear or surrender. “Do you yet be
lieve that you are my master? Fool! I grew beyond your petty wisdom or belief long before your world’s babyhood. I tell you plainly, groveler—Despite such as mine is the only true fruit of experience and insight. In time you will not do otherwise than I have done. You will learn contempt for your fellow beings—for the small malices which they misname their loves and beliefs and hopes and loyalties. You will learn that it is easier to control them than to forbear—easier and better. You will not do otherwise. You will become a shadow of what I am—you will be a despiser without the courage to despise. Continue, groveler. Destroy my work if you must—slay me if you can—but make an end! I am weary of your shallow misperception.”

  In spite of himself, Covenant was moved. Lord Foul’s lordly mien, his dignity and resignation, spoke more vividly than any cursing or defiance. Covenant saw that he still had answers to find, regardless of all he had endured.

  But before he could respond, try to articulate the emotions and intuitions which Lord Foul’s words called up in him, a sudden clap of vehemence splintered the silence of the thronehall. A great invisible door opened in the air at his back; without warning, strong presences, furious and abhorring, stood behind him. The violence of their emanations almost broke his concentrated hold on Lord Foul.

  He clenched his will, steadied himself to face a shock, and turned.

  He found himself looking up at tall figures like the one he had seen in the cave of the EarthBlood under Melenkurion Skyweir. They towered above him, grisly and puissant; he seemed to see them through the stone rather than within the chamber.

  They were the specters of the dead Lords. He recognized Kevin Landwaster son of Loric. Beside Kevin stood two other livid men whom he knew instinctively to be Loric Vilesilencer and Damelon Giantfriend. There were Prothall, Osondrea, a score of men and women Covenant had never met, never heard named. With them was Elena daughter of Lena. And behind and above them all rose another figure, a dominating man with hot prophetic eyes and one halfhand: Berek Earthfriend, the Lord-Fatherer.