Considering the city, the First spoke as if she did not wish to show that she was moved. “Here is a habitation, in good sooth-a dwelling fit for Giants. Such work our people do not lightly undertake or inconsiderately perform. Perhaps the Giants of this place knew that they were lost to Home. But they were not lost to themselves. They have given pride to all their people.” Her voice held a faint shimmer like the glow of hot iron.
And Pitchwife lifted up his head as if he could not contain his wildness, and sang like a cry of recognition across the ages:
"We are the Giants,
born to sail,
and bold to go wherever dreaming goes."
Covenant could not bear to listen. Not lost to themselves. No. Not until the end, until it killed them. He, too, could remember songs. Now we are Unhomed, bereft of root and kith and kin. Gripping his passions with both hands to control them, restrain them for a little while yet, he moved away along the rampart.
On the way, he forced himself to look into some of the rooms and halls, like a gesture of duty to the dead.
All the stone of the chambers-chairs, utensils, tables-was intact, though every form of wood or fiber had long since fallen away. But the surfaces were scarred with salt: whorls and swirls across the floors; streaks down the walls; encrustations over the bed frames; spontaneous slow patterns as lovely as frost-work and as corrosive as guilt. Dust or cobwebs could not have articulated more eloquently the emptiness of The Grieve.
Impelled by his private urgency, Covenant returned to the centre of the city. With his companions trailing behind him, he took a crooked stairway which descended back into the cliff, then toward the Sea again. The stairs were made for Giants; he had to half-leap down them awkwardly, and every landing jolted his heart. But the daylight had begun to fade, and he was in a hurry. He went down three levels before he looked into more rooms.
The first doorway led to a wide hall large enough for scores of Giants. But the second, some distance farther along the face of the city, was shut. It had been closed for ages; all the cracks and joints around the architrave were sealed by salt. His instincts ran ahead of his mind. For reasons he could not have named, he barked to Brinn, “Get this open. I want to see what's inside.”
Brian moved to obey; but the salt prevented him from obtaining a grip.
At once, Seadreamer joined him and began scraping the crust away like a man who could not stand closed doors, secrets. Soon, he and Brinn were able to gain a purchase for their fingers along the edge of the stone. With an abrupt wrench, they swung the door outward.
Air, which had been tombed for so long that it no longer held any taint of must or corruption, spilled through the opening.
Within was a private living chamber. For a moment, dimness obscured it. But as Covenant's eyes adjusted, he made out a dark form sitting upright and rigid in a chair beside the hearth.
Mummified by dead air and time and subtle salt, a Giant.
His hands crushed the arms of the chair, perpetuating forever his final agony. Splinters of old stone still jutted between his fingers.
His forehead above his vacant eyesockets was gone. The top of his head was gone. His skull was empty, as if his brain had exploded, tearing away half his cranium.
Hellfire!
“It was as the old tellers have said.” Brinn sounded like the dead air. “Thus they were slain by the Giant-Raver. Unresisting in their homes.”
Hell and blood!
Trembling, Seadreamer moved forward. “Seadreamer,” the First said softly from the doorway, warning him. He did not stop. He touched the dead Giant's hand, tried to unclose those rigid fingers. But the ancient flesh became dust in his grasp and sifted like silence to the floor.
A spasm convulsed his face. For an instant, his eyes glared madly. His fists bunched at the sides of his head, as if he were trying to fight back against the Earth-Sight. Then he whirled and surged toward Covenant as if he meant to wrest the tale of the Unhomed from Covenant by force.
“Giant!”
The First's command struck Seadreamer. He veered aside, lurched to press himself against the wall, struggling for self-mastery.
Shouts that Covenant could not still went on in his head: curses that had no meaning. He forced his way from the room, hastened to continue his descent toward the base of Coercri.
He reached the flat headrock of the piers as the terns were settling to roost for the night and the last pink of sunset was fading from the Sea. The waves gathered darkly as they climbed the levee, then broke into froth and phosphorescence against the stone. Coercri loomed above him; with the sun behind it, it seemed to impend toward the Sea as if it were about to fall.
He could barely discern the features of his companions. Linden, the Giants, Sunder and Hollian, the Haruchai, even Vain-they were night and judgment to him, a faceless jury assembled to witness the crisis of his struggle with the past, with memory and power, and to pronounce doom. He knew what would happen as if he had foreseen it with his guts, though his mind was too lost in passion to recognize anything except his own need. He had made promises-He seemed to hear the First saying before she spoke, “Now, Thomas Covenant. The time has come. At your behest, we have beheld The Grieve. Now we must have the story of our lost kinfolk. There can be neither joy nor decision for us until we have heard the tale.”
The water tumbled its rhythm against the levee, echoing her salt pain. He answered without listening to himself, “Start a fire. A big one.” He knew what the Giants would do when they heard what they wanted. He knew what he would do.
The Haruchai obeyed. With brands they had garnered from Seareach, and Seadreamer's firepot, they started a blaze near the base of the piers, then brought driftwood to stoke the flames. Soon the fire was as tall as Giants, and shadows danced like memories across the ramparts.
Now Covenant could see. Sunder and Hollian held back their apprehension sternly. Linden watched him as if she feared he had fallen over the edge of sanity. The faces of the Giants were suffused with firelight and waiting, with hunger for any anodyne. Reflecting flames, the flat countenances of the Haruchai looked inviolate and ready, as pure as the high mountains where they made their homes. And Vain-Vain stood black against the surrounding night, and revealed nothing.
But none of that mattered to Covenant. The uselessness of his own cursing did not matter. Only the fire held any meaning; only Coercri, and the lorn reiteration of the waves. He could see Foamfollower in the flames. Words which he had suppressed for long days of dread and uncertainty came over him like a creed, and he began to speak.
He told what he had learned about the Unhomed, striving to heal their slaughter by relating their story.
Joy is in the ears that hear.
Foamfollower! Did you let your people die because you knew I was going to need you?
The night completed itself about him as he spoke, spared only by stars from being as black as The Grieve. Firelight could not ease the dark of the city or the dark of his heart. Nothing but the surge of the Sea — rise and fall, dirge and mourning-touched him as he offered their story to the Dead.