Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson

out of a heroic past. The message of her gaze was suddenly plain; in the suspense of her curiosity she was hanging from the hope that he would reveal himself to her, give her some glimpse of his high calling to appease her for her youth and ignorance.
The idea filled him with strange reverberations. He was not used to such flattery; it gave him an unfamiliar sense of possibility. Quickly, he searched for some high- sounding title to give himself, some name by which he could please Lena without falsifying himself to Trell. Then he had an inspiration. “Thomas Covenant,” he said as if he were rising to a challenge, “the Unbeliever.”
Immediately, he felt that with that name he had committed himself to more than he could measure at present. The act made him feel pretentious, but Lena rewarded him with a beaming glance, and Trell accepted the statement gravely. “Well, Thomas Covenant,” he replied, “you are welcome to Mithil Stonedown. Please accept the hospitality of this home. I must go now to take my graveling as I promised. It may be that Atiaran my wife will return soon. And if you prod her, Lena may remember to offer you refreshment while I am gone.”
While he spoke, Trell turned back to his stone pot. He wrapped his arms about it, lifted it from its base. With red-gold flames reflecting a dance in his hair and beard, he carried the pot toward the doorway. Lena hurried ahead of him to hold open the curtain, and in a moment Trell was gone, leaving Covenant with one glimpse of the contents of the pot. It was full of small, round stones like fine gravel, and they seemed to be on fire.
“Damnation,” Covenant whispered. “How heavy is that thing?”
“Three men cannot lift the pot alone,” replied Lena proudly. “But when the graveling burns, my father may lift it easily. He is a Gravelingas of the rhadhamaerl , deep with the lore of stone.”
Covenant stared after him for a moment, appalled by Trell's strength.
Then Lena said, “Now, I must not fail to offer you refreshment. Will you wash or bathe? Are you thirsty? We have good springwine.”
Her voice brought back the scintillation of Covenant's nerves. His instinctive distrust of Trell's might dissipated under the realization that he had a power of his own. This world accepted him; it accorded him importance. People like Trell and Lena were prepared to take him as seriously as he wanted. All he had to do was keep moving, follow the path of his dream to Revelstone- whatever that was. He felt giddy at the prospect. On the impetus of the moment, he determined to participate in his own importance, enjoy it while it lasted.
To cover his rush of new emotions, he told Lena that he would like to wash. She took him past a curtain into another room, where water poured continuously from a spout in the wall. A sliding stone valve sent the water into either a washbasin or a large tub, both formed of stone. Lena showed him some fine sand to use as soap, then left him. The water was cold, but he plunged his hands and head into it with something approaching enthusiasm.
When he was done, he looked around for a towel, but did not see one. Experimentally, he eased a hand over the glowing pot that lit the room. The warm yellow light dried his fingers rapidly, so he leaned over the pot, rubbing the water from his face and neck, and soon even his hair was dry. By force of habit, he went through his VSE, examining the nearly invisible marks where his hands had been cut. Then he pushed the curtain out of his way and re-entered the central chamber.
He found that another woman had joined Lena. As he returned, he heard Lena say, “He says he knows nothing of us.” Then the other woman looked at him, and he guessed immediately that she was Atiaran. The leaf pattern at the shoulders of her long brown robe seemed to be a kind of family emblem; he did not need such hints to see the long familiarity in the way the older woman touched Lena's shoulder, or the similarities in their