The Illearth War, Page 2

  For a week or so, he made progress. He paced through the charted neatness of his house like a robot curiously aware of the machinery inside him, searching despite the limited functions of his programming for one good answer to death. And when he left the house, walked out the driveway to pick up his groceries, or hiked for hours through the woods along Righters Creek in back of Haven Farm, he moved with an extreme caution, testing every rock and branch and breeze as if he suspected it of concealing malice.

  But gradually he began to look about him, and as he did so some of his determination faltered. April was on the woods—the first signs of a spring which should have appeared beautiful to him. But at unexpected moments his sight seemed to go suddenly dim with sorrow as he remembered the spring of the Land. Compared to that, where the very health of the sap and buds was visible, palpable, discernible by touch and scent and sound, the woods he now walked looked sadly superficial. The trees and grass and hills had no savor, no depth of beauty. They could only remind him of Andelain and the taste of aliantha.

  Then other memories began to disturb him. For several days, he could not get the woman who had died for him at the battle of Soaring Woodhelven out of his thoughts. He had never even known her name, never even asked her why she had devoted herself to him. She was like Atiaran and Foamfollower and Lena; she assumed that he had a right to such sacrifices.

  Like Lena, about whom he could rarely bear to think, she made him ashamed; and with shame came anger—the old familiar leper’s rage on which so much of his endurance depended. By hell! he fumed. They had no right. They had no right! But then the uselessness of his passion rebounded against him, and he was forced to recite to himself as if he were reading the catechism of his illness, Futility is the defining characteristic of life. Pain is the proof of existence. In the extremity of his moral solitude, he had no other answers.

  At times like that, he found bitter consolation in psychological studies where a subject was sealed off from all sensory input, made blind, deaf, silent, and immobile, and as a result began to experience the most horrendous hallucinations. If conscious normal men and women could be placed so much at the mercy of their own inner chaos, surely one abject leper in a coma could have a dream that was worse than chaos—a dream specifically self-designed to drive him mad. At least what had happened to him did not altogether surpass comprehension.

  Thus in one way or another he survived the days for nearly three weeks after the fire. At times he was almost aware that the unresolved stress within him was building toward a crisis; but repeatedly he repressed the knowledge, drove the idea down with anger. He did not believe he could endure another ordeal; he had handled the first one so badly.

  But even the concentrated vitriol of his anger was not potent enough to protect him indefinitely. One Thursday morning, when he faced himself in the mirror to shave, the crisis abruptly surged up in him, and his hand began to shake so severely that he had to drop the razor in the sink in order to avoid cutting his jugular.

  Events in the Land were not complete. By regaining the Staff of Law, the Lords had done exactly what Lord Foul wanted them to do. That was just the first step in Foul’s plotting—machinations which had begun when he had summoned Covenant’s white gold ring to the Land. He would not be done until he had gained the power of life and death over that entire Earth. And to do that, Foul needed the wild magic of the white gold.

  Covenant stared desperately at himself in the mirror, trying to retain a grip on his own actuality. But he saw nothing in his own eyes capable of defending him.

  He had been deluded once.

  It could happen again.

  Again? he cried, in a voice so forlorn that it sounded like the wail of an abandoned child. Again? He could not master what had happened to him in his first delusion; how could he so much as live through a second?

  He was on the verge of calling the doctors at the leprosarium—calling them to beg!—when he recovered some of his leper’s intransigence. He would not have survived this long if he had not possessed some kind of fundamental capacity to refuse defeat if not despair, and that capacity stopped him now. What could I tell them that they would believe? he rasped. I don’t believe it myself.

  The people of the Land had called him the Unbeliever. Now he found that he would have to earn that title whether the Land actually existed or not.

  And for the next two days he strove to earn it with a grimness which was as close as he could come to courage. He only made one compromise: since his hands shook so badly, he shaved with an electric razor, pushing it roughly at his face as if he were trying to remold his features. Beyond that, he acknowledged nothing. At night, his heart quivered so tangibly in his chest that he could not sleep; but he clenched his teeth and did without sleep. Between himself and delusion he placed a wall of DDS and VSEs; and whenever delusion threatened to breach his defense, he drove it back with curses.

  But Saturday morning came, and still he could not silence the dread which made his hands shake.

  Then at last he decided to risk going among his fellow human beings once more. He needed their actuality, their affirmation of the reality he understood, even their revulsion toward his illness. He knew of no other antidote to delusion; he could no longer face his dilemma alone.

  TWO: Halfhand

  But that decision itself was full of fear, and he did not act on it until evening. He spent most of the day cleaning his house as if he did not expect to return to it. Then, late in the afternoon, he shaved with the electric razor and showered meticulously. For the sake of prudence, he put on a tough pair of jeans, and laced his feet into heavy boots; but over his T-shirt he wore a dress shirt, tie, and sports coat, so that the informality of his jeans and boots would not be held against him. His wallet—generally so useless to him that he did not carry it—he placed in his coat pocket. And into a pocket of his trousers he stuffed a small, sharp penknife—a knife which he habitually took with him in case he lost control of his defensive concentration, and needed something dangerous to help him refocus himself. Finally, as the sun was setting, he walked down his long driveway to the road, where he extended his thumb to hitch a ride away from town.

  The next place down the road was ten miles from Haven Farm, and it was bigger than the town where he had had his accident. He headed for it because he was less likely to be recognized there. But his first problem was to find a safe ride. If any of the local motorists spotted him, he was in trouble from the beginning.

  In the first few minutes, three cars went by without stopping. The occupants stared at him in passing as if he were some kind of minor freak, but none of the drivers slowed down. Then, as the last sunlight faded into dusk, a large truck came toward him. He waved his thumb, and the truck rode to a halt just past him on the loud hissing of air brakes. He climbed up to the door, and was gestured into the cab by the driver.

  The man was chewing over a black stubby cigar, and the air in the cab was thick with smoke. But through the dull haze, Covenant could see that he was big and burly, with a distended paunch, and one heavy arm that moved over the steering wheel like a piston, turning the truck easily. He had only that one arm; his right sleeve was empty, and pinned to his shoulder. Covenant understood dismemberment, and he felt a pang of sympathy for the driver.

  “Where to, buddy?” the big man asked comfortably.

  Covenant told him.

  “No problem,” he responded to a tentative inflection in Covenant’s tone. “I’m going right through there.” As the automatic transmission whined upward through. its gears, he spat his cigar out the window, then let go of the wheel to unwrap and light a new smoke. While his hand was busy, he braced the wheel with his belly. The green light of the instrument panel did not reach his face, but the glow of the cigar coal illuminated massive features whenever he inhaled. In the surging red, his face looked like a pile of boulders.

  With his new smoke going, he rested his arm on the wheel like a sphinx, and abruptly began talking. He had something o
n his mind.

  “You live around here?”

  Covenant said noncommittally, “Yes.”

  “How long? You know the people?”

  “After a fashion.”

  “You know this leper—this Thomas something-or-other—Thomas Covenant?”

  Covenant flinched in the gloom of the cab. To disguise his distress, he shifted his position on the seat. Awkwardly he asked, “What’s your interest?”

  “Me? I got no interest. Just passing through—hauling my ass where they give me a load to go. I never even been around here before. But where I et at back in town I heard talk about this guy. So I ask the broad at the counter, and she damn near yaks my ear off. One question—and I get instant mouth with everything I eat. You know what a leper is?”

  Covenant squirmed. “After a fashion.”

  “Well, it’s a mess, let me tell you. My old lady reads about this stuff all the time in the Bible. Dirty beggars. Unclean. I didn’t know there was creeps like that in America. But that’s what we’re coming to. You know what I think?”

  “What do you think?” Covenant asked dimly.

  “I think them lepers ought to leave decent folks alone. Like that broad at the counter. She’s okay, even with that motor mouth, but there she is, juiced to the gills on account of some sick bastard. That Covenant guy ought to stop thinking of hisself. Other folks don’t need that aggravation. He ought to go away with every other leper and stick to hisself, leave decent folks alone. It’s just selfishness, expecting ordinary guys like you and me to put up with that. You know what I mean?”

  The cigar smoke in the cab was as thick as incense, and it made Covenant feel light-headed. He kept shifting his weight, as if the falseness of his position gave him an uncomfortable seat. But the talk and his vague vertigo made him feel vengeful. For a moment, he forgot his sympathy. He turned his wedding ring forcefully around his finger. As they neared the city limits, he said, “I’m going to a nightclub—just up the road here. How about joining me for a drink?”

  Without hesitation, the trucker said, “Buddy, you’re on. I never pass up a free drink.”

  But they were still several stoplights from the club. To fill the silence, and satisfy his curiosity, Covenant asked the driver what had happened to his arm.

  “Lost it in the war.” He brought the truck to a stop at a light while adjusting his cigar in his lips and steering with his paunch. “We was on patrol, and walked right into one of them antipersonnel mines. Blew the squad to hell. I had to crawl back to camp. Took me two days—I sort of got unhinged, you know what I mean? Didn’t always know what I was doing. Time I got to the doc, it was too late to save the arm.

  “What the hell, I don’t need it. Least my old lady says I don’t—and she ought to know by now.” He chuckled. “Don’t need no two arms for that.”

  Ingenuously Covenant asked, “Did you have any trouble getting a license to drive this rig?”

  “You kidding? I can handle this baby better with my gut than you can with four arms and sober.” He grinned around his cigar, relishing his own humor.

  The man’s geniality touched Covenant. Already he regretted his duplicity. But shame always made him angry, stubborn—a leper’s conditioned reflex. When the truck was parked behind the nightclub, he pushed open the door of the cab and jumped to the ground as if he were in a hurry to get away from his companion.

  Riding in the darkness, he had forgotten how far off the ground he was. An instant of vertigo caught him. He landed awkwardly, almost fell. His feet felt nothing, but the jolt gave an added throb to the ache of his ankles.

  Over his moment of dizziness, he heard the driver say, “You know, I figured you got a head start on the booze.”

  To avoid meeting the man’s stony, speculative stare, Covenant went ahead of him around toward the front of the nightclub.

  As he rounded the corner, Covenant nearly collided with a battered old man wearing dark glasses. The old man stood with his back to the building, extending a bruised tin cup toward the passersby, and following their movements with his ears. He held his head high, but it trembled slightly on his thin neck; and he was singing “Blessed Assurance” as if it were a dirge. Under one arm he carried a white-tipped cane. When Covenant veered away from him, he waved his cup vaguely in that direction.

  Covenant was leery of beggars. He remembered the tattered fanatic who had accosted him like an introduction or preparation just before the onset of his delusion. The memory made him alert to a sudden tension in the night. He stepped close to the blind man and peered into his face.

  The beggar’s song did not change inflection, but he turned an ear toward Covenant, and poked his cup at Covenant’s chest.

  The truck driver stopped behind Covenant. “Hell,” he growled, “they’re swarming. It’s like a disease. Come on. You promised me a drink.”

  1n the light of the streetlamp, Covenant could see that this was not that other beggar, the fanatic. But still the man’s blindness affected him. His sympathy for the maimed rushed up in him. Pulling his wallet out of his jacket, he took twenty dollars and stuffed them in the tin cup.

  “Twenty bucks!” ejaculated the driver. “Are you simple, or what? You don’t need no drink, buddy. You need a keeper.”

  Without a break in his song, the blind man put out a gnarled hand, crumpled the bills, and hid them away somewhere in his rags. Then he turned and went tapping dispassionately away down the sidewalk, secure in the private mysticism of the blind—singing as he moved about “a foretaste of glory divine.”

  Covenant watched his back fade into the night, then swung around toward his companion. The driver was a head taller than Covenant, and carried his bulk solidly on thick legs. His cigar gleamed like one of Drool Rockworm’s eyes.

  Drool, Covenant remembered, Lord Foul’s mad, Cavewightish servant or pawn. Drool had found the Staff of Law, and had been destroyed by it or because of it. His death had released Covenant from the Land.

  Covenant poked a numb finger at the trucker’s chest, trying vainly to touch him, taste his actuality. “Listen,” he said, “I’m serious about that drink. But I should tell you”—he swallowed, then forced himself to say it—“I’m Thomas Covenant. That leper.”

  The driver snorted around his cigar. “Sure, buddy. And I’m Jesus Christ. If you blew your wad, say so. But don’t give me that leper crap. You’re just simple, is all.”

  Covenant scowled up at the man for a moment longer. Then he said resolutely, “Well, in any case, I’m not broke. Not yet. Come on.”

  Together they went on to the entrance of the nightclub. It was called The Door. In keeping with its name, the place had a wide iron gate like a portal into Hades. The gate was lit in a sick green, but spotlighted whitely at its center was a large poster which bore the words:

  Positively the last night

  America’s newest singing sensation

  SUSIE THURSTON

  Included was a photograph which tried to make Susie Thurston look alluring. But the flashy gloss of the print had aged to an ambiguous gray.

  Covenant gave himself a perfunctory VSE, adjured his courage, and walked into the nightclub, holding his breath as if he were entering the first circle of hell.

  Inside the club was crowded; Susie Thurston’s farewell performance was well attended. Covenant and his companion took the only seats they could find, at a small table near the stage. The table was already occupied by a middle-aged man in a tired suit. Something about the way he held his glass suggested that he had been drinking for some time. When Covenant asked to join him, he did not appear to notice. He stared in the direction of the stage with round eyes, looking as solemn as a bird.

  The driver discounted him with a brusque gesture. He turned a chair around, and straddled it as if bracing the burden of his belly against the chair back. Covenant took the remaining seat and tucked himself close to the table, to reduce the risk of being struck by anyone passing between the tables.

  The unaccustomed pres
s of people afflicted him with anxiety. He sat still, huddling into himself. A fear of exposure beat in his veins, and he gripped himself hard, breathing deeply as if resisting an attack of vertigo; surrounded by people who took no notice of him, he felt vulnerable. He was taking too big a chance. But they were people, superficially like himself. He repulsed the urge to flee. Gradually he realized that his companion was waiting for him to order.

  Feeling vaguely ill and defenseless, he raised his arm and attracted the waiter’s attention. The driver ordered a double Scotch on the rocks. Apprehension momentarily paralyzed Covenant’s voice, but then he forced himself to request a gin and tonic. He regretted the order at once; gin and tonic had been Joan’s drink. But he did not change it. He could hardly help sighing with relief when the waiter moved away.

  Through the clutch of his tension, he felt that the order came with almost miraculous promptitude. Swirling around the table, the waiter deposited three drinks, including a glass of something that looked like raw alcohol for the middle-aged man. Raising his glass, the driver downed half his drink, grimaced, and muttered, “Sugar water.” The solemn man poured his alcohol past his jumping Adam’s apple in one movement.

  A part of Covenant’s mind wondered if he were going to end up paying for all three of them.

  Reluctantly he tasted his gin and tonic, and almost gagged in sudden anger. The lime in the drink reminded him intensely of aliantha. Pathetic! he snarled at himself. For punishment, he drank off the rest of the gin, and signaled to the waiter for more. Abruptly he determined to get drunk.

  When the second round came, the waiter again brought three drinks. Covenant looked stiffly at his companions. Then the three of them drank as if they had tacitly engaged each other in a contest.

  Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, the driver leaned forward and said, “Buddy, I got to warn you. It’s your dough. I can drink you under the table.”

  To give the third man an opening, Covenant replied, “I think our friend here is going to last longer than both of us.”