He stopped as if caught in the grip of an unseen fist. He wanted to move, but he could only stand suspended, trapped, looking down the muzzle of the hurtling car. For an instant, he heard the frantic scream of brakes. Then he crumbled.
As he dropped, he had a vague sense that he was falling too soon, that he had not been hit yet. But he could not help himself; he was too afraid, afraid of being crushed. After all his self-protections, to die like this! Then he became aware of a huge blackness which stood behind the sunlight and the gleaming store-windows and the shriek of tires. The light and the asphalt against his head seemed to be nothing more than paintings on a black background; and now the background asserted itself, reached in and bore him down. Blackness radiated through the sunlight like a cold beam of night.
He thought that he was having a nightmare. Absurdly, he heard the old beggar saying, Be true. You need not fail.
The darkness poured through, swamping the day, and the only thing that Covenant was sure he could see was a single red gleam from the police car-a red bolt hot and clear and deadly, transfixing his forehead like a spear.
Three: Invitation to a Betrayal
FOR a time that he could only measure in heartbeats, Covenant hung in the darkness. The red, impaling light was the only fixed point in a universe that seemed to seethe around him. He felt that he might behold a massive moving of heaven and earth, if only he knew where to look; but the blackness and the hot red beam on his forehead prevented him from turning away, and he had to let the currents that swirled around him pass unseen.
Under the pressure of the ferocious light, he could feel every throb of his pulse distinctly in his temples, as if it were his mind which hammered out his life, not his heart. The beats were slow-too slow for the amount of apprehension he felt. He could not conceive what was happening to him. But each blow shook him as if the very structure of his brain were under assault.
Abruptly, the bloody spear of light wavered, then split in two. He was moving toward the light-or the light was approaching him. The two flaming spots were eyes.
The next instant, he heard laughter-high, shrill glee full of triumph and old spite. The voice crowed like some malevolent rooster heralding the dawn of hell, and Covenant's pulse trembled at the sound.
“Done it!” the voice cackled. “I! Mine!” It shrilled away into laughter again.
Covenant was close enough to see the eyes clearly now. They had no whites or pupils; red balls filled the sockets, and light moiled in them like lava. Their heat was so close that Covenant's forehead burned.
Then the eyes flared, seemed to ignite the air around them. Flames spread out, sending a lurid glow around Covenant.
He found himself in a cavern deep in stone. Its walls caught and held the light, so that the cave stayed bright after the single flare of the eyes. The rock was smooth, but broken into hundreds of irregular facets, as if the cavern had been carved with an erratic knife. Entrances gaped in the walls around the circumference of the cave. High above his head, the roof gathered into a thick cluster of stalactites, but the floor was fiat and worn as if by the passing of many feet. Reflections sprang through the stalactites above, so that the cluster swarmed with red gleamings.
The chamber was full of a rank stench, an acrid odour with a sickly sweet under-smell- burning sulphur over the reek of rotting flesh. Covenant gagged on it, and on the sight of the being whose eyes had held him.
Crouched on a low dais near the centre of the cave was a creature with long, scrawny limbs, hands as huge and heavy as shovels, a thin, hunched torso, and a head like a battering ram. As he crouched, his knees came up almost to the level of his ears. One hand was braced on the rock in front of him, the other gripped a long wooden staff shod with metal and intricately carved from end to end. His grizzled mouth was rigid with laughter, and his red eyes seemed to bubble like magma.
“Ha! Done it!” he shrieked again. “Called him. My power. Kill them all!” As his high voice ranted, he slavered hungrily. “Lord Drool! Master! Me!”
The creature leaped to his feet, capering with mad pride. He strode closer to his victim, and Covenant recoiled with a loathing he could not control.
Holding his staff near the centre with both hands, the creature shouted, “Kill you! Take your power! Crush them all! Be Lord Drool!” He raised his staff as if to strike Covenant with it.
Then another voice entered the cavern. It was deep and resonant, powerful enough to fill the air without effort, and somehow deadly, as if an abyss were speaking. “Back, Rockworm!” it commanded. “This prey is too great for you. I claim him.”
The creature jabbed his face toward the ceiling and cried, “Mine! My Staff! You saw. I called him. You saw!”
Covenant followed the red eyes upward, but he could see nothing there except the dizzy chiaroscuro of the clustered stone spikes.
“You had aid,” the deep voice said. “The Staff was too hard a matter for you. You would have destroyed it in simple irritation, had I not taught you some of its uses. And my aid has its price. Do whatever else you wish. I claim this prize. It belongs to me.”
The creature's rage subsided, as if he had suddenly remembered some secret advantage. “My Staff,” he muttered darkly. “I have it. You are not safe.”
“You threaten me?” The deep voice bristled, and its dangers edged closer to the surface. “Watch and ward, Drool Rockworm! Your doom grows upon you. Behold! I have begun!”
There was a low, grinding noise, as of great teeth breaking against each other, and a chilling mist intervened between Covenant and Drool, gathered and swirled and thickened until Drool was blocked from Covenant's sight. At first, the mist glowed with the light of the burning stones, but as it swirled the red faded into the dank, universal grey of fogs. The vile reek melted into a sweeter smell-attar, the odour of, funerals. Despite the blindness of the mist, Covenant` felt that he was no longer in Drool's cavern.
The change gave him no relief. Fear and bewilderment sucked at him as if he were sinking in nightmare. That unbodied voice dismayed him. As the fog blew around him his legs shuddered and bent, and he fell to his knees.
“You do well to pray to me,” the voice intoned. Its deadliness shocked Covenant like a confrontation with grisly murder. “There are no other hopes or helps for a man amid the wrack of your fate. My Enemy will not aid you. It was he who chose you for this doom. And when he has chosen, he does not give; he takes.” A raw timbre of contempt ran through the voice, scraping Covenant's nerves as it passed. “Yes, you would do well to pray to me. I might ease you of your burden. Whatever health or strength you ask is mine to give. For I have begun my attack upon this age, and the future is mine. I will not fail again.”
Covenant's mind lay under the shock of the voice. But the offer of health penetrated him, and his heart jumped. He felt the beat clearly in his chest, felt his heart labouring against the burden of his fear. But he was still too stricken to speak.
Over his silence, the voice continued, "Kevin was a fool-fey, anile and gutless. They are all fools. Look you, groveller. The mighty High Lord Kevin, son of Loric and great-grandson of Berek Lord-Fatherer whom I hate, stood where you now kneel, and he thought to destroy me. He discovered my designs, recognized some measure of my true stature though the dotard had set me on his right side in the Council for long years without sensing his peril-saw at the last who I was. Then there was war between us, war that blasted the west and threatened his precious Keep itself. The feller fist was mine and he knew it. When his armies faltered and his power waned, he lost himself in despair-he became mine in despair. He thought that he still might utterly undo me. Therefore he met me in that cavern from which I have rescued you Kiril Threndor, Heart of Thunder.