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hunched torso, and a head like a battering ram. As he crouched, his knees came up almost to the level of his ears. One hand was braced on the rock in front of him, the other gripped a long wooden staff shod with metal and intricately carved from end to end. His grizzled mouth was rigid with laughter, and his red eyes seemed to bubble like magma.
“Ha! Done it!” he shrieked again. “Called him. My power. Kill them all!” As his high voice ranted, he slavered hungrily. “Lord Drool! Master! Me!”
The creature leaped to his feet, capering with mad pride. He strode closer to his victim, and Covenant recoiled with a loathing he could not control.
Holding his staff near the centre with both hands, the creature shouted, “Kill you! Take your power! Crush them all! Be Lord Drool!” He raised his staff as if to strike Covenant with it.
Then another voice entered the cavern. It was deep and resonant, powerful enough to fill the air without effort, and somehow deadly, as if an abyss were speaking. “Back, Rockworm!” it commanded. “This prey is too great for you. I claim him.”
The creature jabbed his face toward the ceiling and cried, “Mine! My Staff! You saw. I called him. You saw!”
Covenant followed the red eyes upward, but he could see nothing there except the dizzy chiaroscuro of the clustered stone spikes.
“You had aid,” the deep voice said. “The Staff was too hard a matter for you. You would have destroyed it in simple irritation, had I not taught you some of its uses. And my aid has its price. Do whatever else you wish. I claim this prize. It belongs to me.”
The creature's rage subsided, as if he had suddenly remembered some secret advantage. “My Staff,” he muttered darkly. “I have it. You are not safe.”
“You threaten me?” The deep voice bristled, and its dangers edged closer to the surface. “Watch and ward, Drool Rockworm! Your doom grows upon you. Behold! I have begun!”
There was a low, grinding noise, as of great teeth breaking against each other, and a chilling mist intervened between Covenant and Drool, gathered and swirled and thickened until Drool was blocked from Covenant's sight. At first, the mist glowed with the light of the burning stones, but as it swirled the red faded into the dank, universal grey of fogs. The vile reek melted into a sweeter smell- attar, the odour of, funerals. Despite the blindness of the mist, Covenant` felt that he was no longer in Drool's cavern.
The change gave him no relief. Fear and bewilderment sucked at him as if he were sinking in nightmare. That unbodied voice dismayed him. As the fog blew around him his legs shuddered and bent, and he fell to his knees.
“You do well to pray to me,” the voice intoned. Its deadliness shocked Covenant like a confrontation with grisly murder. “There are no other hopes or helps for a man amid the wrack of your fate. My Enemy will not aid you. It was he who chose you for this doom. And when he has chosen, he does not give; he takes.” A raw timbre of contempt ran through the voice, scraping Covenant's nerves as it passed. “Yes, you would do well to pray to me. I might ease you of your burden. Whatever health or strength you ask is mine to give. For I have begun my attack upon this age, and the future is mine. I will not fail again.”
Covenant's mind lay under the shock of the voice. But the offer of health penetrated him, and his heart jumped. He felt the beat clearly in his chest, felt his heart labouring against the burden of his fear. But he was still too stricken to speak.
Over his silence, the voice continued, "Kevin was a fool- fey, anile and gutless. They are all fools. Look you, groveller. The mighty High Lord Kevin, son of Loric and great-grandson of Berek Lord-Fatherer whom I hate, stood where you now kneel, and he thought to destroy me. He discovered my designs, recognized some measure of my true stature though the dotard had set me on his right side in the Council for long years without sensing