Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson

then knelt to look more closely at his aghast incomprehension.
What the bloody hell is this?
Carefully, respectfully, she asked, “How may I aid you? You are a stranger to the Land- that I see. You have fought an ill cloud. Command me.” His silence seemed to daunt her. She dropped her eyes. “Will you not speak?”
What's happening to me?
The next instant, she gasped with excitement, pointed in awe at his right hand. “Halfhand! Do legends live again?” Wonder lit her face. “Berek Halfhand!” she breathed. “Is it true?”
Berek? At first, he could not remember where he had heard that name before. Then it came back to him. Berek! In cold panic he realized that the nightmare was not over, that this girl and Lord Foul the Despiser were both part of the same experience.
Again he saw darkness crouching behind the brilliant blue sky. It loomed over him, beat toward his head like vulture wings.
Where-?
Awkwardly, as if his joints were half frozen with dread, he lurched to his feet.
At once, an immense panorama sprang into view below him, attacked his sight like a bludgeon of exhilaration and horror. He was on a stone platform four thousand feet or more above the earth. Birds glided and wheeled under his perch. The air was as clean and clear as crystal, and through it the great sweep of the landscape seemed immeasurably huge, so that his eyes ached with trying to see it all. Hills stretched away directly under him; plains unrolled toward the horizons on both sides; a river angled silver in the sunlight out of the hills on his left. All was luminous with spring, as if it had just been born in that morning's dew.
Bloody hell!
The giddy height staggered him. Vulture wings of darkness beat at his head. Vertigo whirled up at him, made the earth veer.
He did not know where he was. He had never seen this before. How had he come here? He had been hit by a police car, and Foul had brought him here. Foul had brought him here?
Brought me here?
Uninjured?
He reeled in terror toward the girl and the mountain. Three dizzy steps took him to the gap in the parapet. There he saw that he was on the tip of a slim splinter of stone- at least five hundred feet long- that pointed obliquely up from the base of the cliff like a rigid finger accusing the sky. Stairs had been cut into the upper surface of the shaft, but it was as steep as a ladder.
For one spinning instant, he thought dumbly, I've got to get out of here. None of this is happening to me.
Then the whole insanity of the situation recoiled on him, struck at him out of the vertiginous air like the claws of a condor. He stumbled; the maw of the fall gaped below him. He started to scream silently:
No!!
As he pitched forward, the girl caught his arm, heaved at him. He swung and toppled to the stone within the parapet, pulled his knees up against his chest, covered his head.
Insane! he cried as if he were gibbering.
Darkness writhed like nausea inside his skull. Visions of madness burned across his mindscape.
How?
Impossible!
He had been crossing the street. He insisted upon that desperately. The light had been green.
Where?
He had been hit by a police car.
Impossible!
It had aimed itself straight for his heart, and it had hit him.
And not injured him?!
Mad. I'm going mad mad mad.
And not injured him?
Nightmare. None of this is happening, is happening, is happening.
Through the wild whirl of his misery, another hand suddenly clasped his. The grip was hard, urgent; it caught him like an anchor.
Nightmare! I'm dreaming. Dreaming!
The thought flared through his panic like a revelation. Dreaming! Of course he was dreaming. Juggling furiously, he put the pieces together. He had been hit by a police car- knocked unconscious. Concussion. He might be out for hours- days. And while he was out, he was having this dream.
That was the answer. He clutched it as if it were the girl's grip on his straining hand. It steadied him against his vertigo, simplified his fear. But it was not enough. The darkness