Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson Page B

of what he would have to deal with in this dream. He would have to find out where he stood. Following the girl's lead, he asked, “Who are you?”
“I am Lena,” she replied formally, "daughter of
Atiaran. My father is Trell, Gravelingas of the rhadhamaerl . Our home is in Mithil Stonedown. Have you been to our Stonedown?"
“No.” He was tempted to ask her what a Stonedown was, but he had a more important question in mind. “Where-” The word caught in his throat as if it were a dangerous concession to darkness. “Where are we?”
“We are upon Kevin's Watch.” Springing lightly to her feet, she stretched her arms to the earth and the sky. “Behold.”
Gritting his resolve, Covenant turned and knelt against the parapet. With his chest braced on the rim, he forced himself to look.
“This is the Land,” Lena said joyfully, as if the outspread earth had a power to thrill her. “It reaches far beyond seeing to the north, west, and east, though the old songs say that High Lord Kevin stood here and saw the whole of the Land and all its people. So this place is named Kevin's Watch. Is it possible that you do not know this?”
Despite the coolness of the breeze, Covenant was sweating. Vertigo knuckled his temples, and only the hard edge of the stone against his heart kept it under control. “I don't know anything,” he groaned into the open fall.
Lena glanced at him anxiously, then after a moment turned back to the Land. Pointing with one slim arm to the northwest, she said, "There is the Mithil River. Our Stonedown stands beside it, but hidden behind this mountain. It flows from the Southron Range behind us to join the Black River. That is the northern bound of the South Plains, where the soil is not generous and few people live. There are only five Stonedowns in the South Plains. But in this north-going line of hills live some Woodhelvennin.
“East of the hills are the Plains of Ra.” Her voice sparkled as she went on: "That is the home of the wild free horses, the Ranyhyn, and their tenders the Ramen. For fifty leagues across the Plains they gallop, and serve none that they do not themselves choose.
“Ah, Thomas Covenant,” she sighed, “it is my dream to see those horses. Most of my people are too content- they do not travel, and have not seen so much as a Woodhelven. But I wish to walk the Plains of Ra, and see the horses galloping.”
After a long pause, she resumed: “These mountains are the Southron Range. Behind them are the Wastes, and the Grey Desert. No life or passage is there; all the Land is north and west and east from us. And we stand on Kevin's Watch, where the highest of the Old Lords stood at the last battle, before the coming of the Desolation. Our people remember that, and avoid the Watch as a place of ill omen. But Atiaran my mother brought me here to teach me of the Land. And in two years I will be old enough to attend the Loresraat and learn for myself, as my mother did. Do you know,” she said proudly, “my mother has studied with the Lorewardens?” She looked at Covenant as if she expected him to be impressed. But then her eyes fell, and she murmured, “But you are a Lord, and know all these things. You listen to my talk so that you may laugh at my ignorance.”
Under the spell of her voice, and the pressure of his vertigo, he had a momentary vision of what the Land must have looked like after Kevin had unleashed the Ritual of Desecration. Behind the luminous morning, he saw hills ripped barren, soil blasted, rank water trickling through vile fens in the riverbed, and over it all a thick gloom of silence- no birds, no insects, no animals, no people, nothing living to raise one leaf or hum or growl or finger against the damage. Then sweat ran into his eyes, blurred them like tears. He pulled away from the view and seated himself again with his back to the wall. “No,” he murmured to Lena, thinking, You don't understand. “I did all my laughing- long ago.”
Now he seemed to see