Covenant stared whitely up at him, did not obey.
“Rise!” the creature raged. With one spatulate hand, he grabbed Covenant's arm and nearly dislocated it yanking him to his feet.
Covenant bit down panic and pain. “You're going to regret this!” He had to shout to make himself heard. The invocation pounded in his chest “Foul wants me! Do you think you can defy him and get away with it?”
“Hal” barked the Cavewight as if he were close to ecstasy. “We are too wily! He does not know us. We have learned. Learned. Him so wise.” For an instant, all the voices shared his contempt. Drool Rockworm! “He is blind. Believes we have not found you.” The creature spat wildness instead of laughter.
Then he wrenched Covenant around to face the mound. Linden groaned Covenant's name. He heard a thud as one of the creatures silenced her. His arm was gripped by fingers that knew how to break stone.
Flames began to writhe like ghouls across the mound, casting anguish toward the roof of the cave.
“Witness!” the Cavewight grated. “The Wightbarrow!”
The invocation took on a timbre of lust.
“We have served and served. Forever we have served. Chattel. Fodder. Sacrifice. And no reward. Do this. Do that Dig. Run. Die. No reward. None!
“Now he pays. Punishment and apocalypse.
The Cavewights’ virulence staggered Covenant. The muscles of his arm were being crushed. But he shut his mind to everything else. Groping for a way to save Linden's life if not his own, he protested hoarsely, “How? He's the Despiser He’ll tear your hearts out!”
But the Cavewights were beyond fear. “Witness!” Covenant's captor repeated. “See it Fire. Life! The Wightbarrow of Drool Rockworm!”
Drool Rockworm, hammered the chant. Drool Rockworm! “From the dead. We have learned. Bloodshed. Sunbane. Law broken. The blood of the accursed!” He almost capered in his exultation. “You!”
His free hand clasped a long spike of rock like a dagger.
In litany, he shouted, “Blood brings power! Power brings life! Drool Rockworm rises! Drool takes ring! Ring crashes Despiser! Cavewights are free! Punishment and apocalypse!”
Brandishing his spike at Covenant's face, he added, “Soon. You are the accursed. Bringer of ruin. Your blood shed upon the Wightbarrow.” The side of the spike stroked Covenant's stiff cheek. “Soon.”
Covenant heard Linden pant as she struggled for breath, No Other Way “Bones- ” He winced, expecting her to be hit again. But still she tried to make him hear her. “The bones- ”
Her voice was congested with effort and intention; but he had no idea what she meant.
The flames worming through the mound made his skin crawl; yet he could not look away from them. Perhaps everything he had decided or understood was false, Foul-begotten. Perhaps the Banefire had been too essentially corrupt to give him any kind of trustworthy caamora. How could he tell? He could not see.
The pain in his arm made his head reel. The rocklight seemed to yell orange-red heat, stoking the fire in the Wightbarrow. He had lost the First and Pitchwife and Vain, had lost Andelain itself. Now he was about to lose his life and Linden and everything because there was no middle ground, no wild magic without ruin. She was whispering his name, but it no longer made any difference.
His balance drifted, and he found himself staring emptily at the stone on which he barely stood. It was the only part of the floor that had been purposefully shaped. The Cavewight had placed him in the centre of a round depression like a basin. Its shallow sides had been rubbed smooth and polished until they reflected rocklight around him like burnished metal.
From between his feet, a narrow trough led straight under the mound. A trough to channel his blood toward what remained of Drool Rockworm's bones. Fire rose hungrily toward the ceiling.
Abruptly, the invocation was cut off, slashed out of the air as if by the stroke of a blade. Its sudden cessation seemed to leave him deaf. He jerked up his head.
The spike was poised to strike like a fang at the middle of his chest. He planted his feet, braced himself to try to twist away, make one last effort for life.
But the blow did not fall. The Cavewight was not looking at him. None of the creatures were looking at him. Around the cave, they surged upright in outrage and fear.
An instant later, he recovered his hearing as the clamour of battle resounded past the Wightbarrow.
Into the cave charged the First and Pitchwife.
They were alone; but they attacked as if they were as potent as an army.
Surprise made them momentarily irresistible. She was battered and weary; but her longsword flashed in her hands like red lightning, hit with the force of thunder. The Cavewights went down before her like wheat in a storm. Pitchwife followed at her back with a battle axe in each hand and fought as if he were not wounded and scarcely able to draw breath. Bright galls scored her sark where the mail had deflected blows; his dripped blood where cudgels had crushed it into his flesh. Exertion sheened their faces and limbs.
The Cavewights moiled against them in frenzy.
The creatures were too frantic to fight effectively. They hampered each other, blocked their own efforts. The First and Pitchwife were halfway to the Wightbarrow before the sheer pressure of numbers stopped them.
But there the impetus of combat shifted. Desperation rallied the Cavewights. And the widening of the cave allowed the Giants to be surrounded, assailed from all sides. Their attempted rescue was valiant and doomed. la moments, they would be overwhelmed.
Sensing their opportunity, the creatures became less wild. Their mountain-delving strength dealt out blows which forced the First and Pitchwife back-to-back, drove them to fight defensively, for bare survival.
Covenant's captor faced him again. The Cavewight's laval eyes burned flame and fury. Rocklight gleamed on his spike as he cocked his arm to stab out Covenant's life.
Hoarse with panic and insight. Linden yelled, “The bones! Get the bones!”
At once, one of the creatures hit her so hard that she sprawled into the basin at Covenant's feet. She lay there, stunned and twisted. He feared her back had been broken.
But the Cavewights understood her if he did not. A sound like a wail shrilled across the combat. They fought with redoubled fever. The spike aimed at Covenant wavered as the Cavewight looked fearfully toward the fray.
Covenant could not see the First or Pitchwife through the fierce press. But suddenly her shout sprang at the ceiling-the tantara of a Swordmain summoning her last resources:
“Stone and Sea!”
And the throng of Cavewights seemed to rupture as if she had become a detonation. Abandoning Pitchwife, she crashed past the creatures, shed them from her arms and shoulders like rubble. In a spray of blood, she hacked her way toward the Wightbarrow.
Pitchwife could have been slain then. But he was not. His assailants hurled themselves after the First. His axes bit into their backs as he followed her.
The wailing scaled into a shriek when she reached the mound.
Snatching up a bone, she whirled to face her attackers. The bone shed flame like a fagot; but her Giantish fingers bore the pain and did not flinch.
Instantly, all the creatures froze. Silence seized their cries; horror locked their limbs.
Pitchwife wrenched one axe out of the spine of a Cavewight, raised his weapons to parry blows. But none came. He was ignored. Retching for air, he thrust through the crowd toward the First No one moved.
He limped to her side, dropped one axe, and grasped another burning bone. The paralysis of the Cavewights tightened involuntarily. Their eyes pleaded. Some of them began to shiver in chill panic.