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

thighs. He resisted it by listening to her song.
In a soft and somehow naive tone, she sang:

Something there is in beauty
which grows in the soul of the beholder
like a flower:
fragile-
for many are the blights
which may waste
the beauty
or the beholder-
and imperishable-
for the beauty may die,
or the beholder may die,
or the world may die,
but the soul in which the flower grows 
survives.

Her voice folded him in a comfortable spell which he did not want to end. After a pause full of the scent of pine and the whispering breeze, he said softly, “I like that.”
“Do you? I am glad. It was made by Tomal the Craftmaster, for the dance when he wed Imoiran Moiran-daughter. But oft-times the beauty of a song is in the singing, and I am no singer. It may be that tonight Atiaran my mother will sing for the Stonedown. Then you will hear a real song.”
Covenant gave no answer. He lay still, only wishing to nestle in his pillow for as long as he could. The tingling in his palms seemed to urge him to embrace Lena, and he lay still, enjoying the desire and wondering where he would find the courage.
Then she began to sing again. The tune sounded familiar, and behind it he heard the rumour of dark wings. Suddenly he realized that it was very much like the tune that went with “Golden Boy.”
He had been walking down the sidewalk toward the offices of the phone company- the Bell Telephone Company; that name was written in gilt letters on the door-to pay his bill in person.
He jerked off Lena's lap, jumped to his- feet. A mist of violence dimmed his vision. “What song is that?” he demanded thickly. .
Startled, Lena answered, “No song. I was only trying to make a melody. Is it wrong?”
The tone of her voice steadied him- she sounded so abandoned, so made forlorn by his quick anger. Words failed him, and the mist passed. No business, he thought. I've got no business taking it out on her. Extending his hands, he helped her to her feet. He tried to smile, but his stiff face could only grimace. “Where do we go now?”
Slowly the hurt faded from her eyes. “You are strange, Thomas Covenant,” she said.
Wryly, he replied, “I didn't know it was this bad.”
For a moment, they stood gazing into each other's eyes. Then she surprised him by blushing and dropping his hands. There was a new excitement in her voice as she said, “We will go to the Stonedown. You will amaze my mother and father.” Gaily, she turned and ran away down the valley.
She was lithe and light and graceful as she ran, and Covenant watched her, musing on the strange new feelings that moved in him. He had an unexpected sense that this Land might offer him some spell with which he could conjure away his impotence, some rebirth to which he could cling even after he regained consciousness, after the Land and all its insane implications faded into the miasma of half-remembered dreams. Such hope did not require that the Land be real, physically actual and independent of his own unconscious, uncontrolled dream-weaving. No, leprosy was an incurable disease, and if he did not die from his accident, he would have to live with that fact. But a dream might heal other afflictions. It might. He set off after Lena with a swing in his stride and eagerness in his veins.
The sun was down far enough in the sky to leave the lower half of the valley in shadow. Ahead of him, he could see Lena beckoning, and he followed the stream toward her, enjoying the spring of the turf under his feet as he walked. He felt somehow taller than before, as if the hurtloam had done more to him than simply heal his cuts and scrapes. Nearing Lena, he seemed to see parts of her for the first time- the delicacy of her ears when her hair swung behind them- the way the soft fabric of her shift hung on her breasts and hips- her slim waist. The sight of her made the tingling in his palms grow stronger.
She smiled at him, then led the way along the stream and out of the valley. They moved down a crooked file