And so, my friends, we come to it at last. The confrontation between Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever and Lord Foul, the Despiser; between the White Gold and the Illearth Stone. All paths led here, to Foul’s Creche. Here the fate of the Land will be decided. It is not a battle of swords, however. But a battle of power. Wild magic against the power of despite, manifested in the Stone.”Attempt me then,” the dead giant went on. “Unleash the lust which fills you. Do you believe you can vindicate yourself against me? Are you so blind? Comrade! There is nothing that justifies you. If you shed blood enough to was the Land from east to west, you cannot wash out the ill of yourself. Imbecile! Anile fool! If the master did not control you, you would do his work for him so swiftly that he would be unable to take pleasure in it. Come then, comrade! Attempt me. I am slain already. How will you bring me to death again?”
“I will attempt it.” Foamfollower grated softly, “in my own way.” The specter’s unnecessary goading told him what he needed to know. The creatures could have slain him at any time—yet they waited while Kinslaughterer strove to provoke him. Therefore Soulcrusher still had something to gain from him; therefore Covenant was still alive, still unbeaten. Perhaps Lord Foul hoped to use Foamfollower himself against the Unbeliever.
But Foamfollower had survived the caamora of Hotash Slay. He poised himself, his whole body tensed. Yet when he sprang suddenly into motion, he did not attack Kinslaughterer. Straining mightily, thrusting with all the power of his legs, he launched himself at the guards before the door of the thronehall.
They ducked under the suddenness of his assault. He dove headlong over them, forearms braced, so that his entire force struck the doors.
They had not been made to withstand such an impact. With a sharp cry of splintering stone, they burst inward.
Foamfollower fell in a flurry of door shards, somersaulted, snapped to his feet in the thronehall of Ridjeck Thome.
The room was a wide round hall like the one he had just left, but it had fewer doors, and its ceiling was far higher, as if to accommodate the immense powers which occupied it. Opposite Foamfollower was the great throne itself. On a low mound against the far wall, old grisly rock had been upreared to form the Despiser's seat in the shape of jaws, raw hooked teeth bared to grip and tear. It and its base were the only things he had seen in Foul's Creche which were not perfectly carved, utterly polished. It appeared to have been irremediably crippled, grotesqued, by the age-long weight of Lord Foul's malice. It looked like a prophecy or foretaste of ultimate doom for all Ridjeck Thome's immaculate rock.
Set into the floor directly before it was the Illearth Stone.
The Stone was not as large as Foamfollower had expected it to be; it did not appear so big or heavy that he could not have lifted it in his arms. Yet its radiance staggered him like the blow of a prodigious fist. It was not extremely bright--its illumination in the thronehall was only a little stronger than the light elsewhere--but it blazed in its setting like an incarnation of absolute cold. It pulsed like a mad heart, sent out unfetterable gouts and flares of force, radiated violently its power for corruption. Foamfollower slammed into the glare and stopped as if he could already feel the gelid emerald turning his skin to ice.
He stared at the Stone for a moment, horrified by its strength. But then his staggered senses became aware of another might in the thronehall. This power seemed oddly subdued in comparison to the Stone. But it was only subtler, more insidious--not weaker. As Foamfollower turned toward it, he knew that it was the Stone's master.
Lord Foul.
He located the Despiser more by tactile impression than by sight. Lord Foul was essentially invisible, though he cast an impenetrable blankness in the air like the erect shadow of a man—a shadow of absence rather than presence which showed where he would have been if he had been physically corporeal—and around the shadow shown a penumbra of glistering green. From within it, he reeked of attar.
He stood to one side of the Stone, with his back to the door and the Giant. And before him, facing Foamfollower, was Thomas Covenant.
Thomas Covenant stands before Lord Foul still shackled when Foamfollower bursts into the thronehall. But neither Covenant or the Despiser seem to notice him. They are intent on each other. Foul then delivers a crushing blow to Covenant’s mouth, thus re-injuring him to his “before summoning” state. Foamfollower charges to his friend’s aid.
Before he had taken two strides, an avalanche of creatures rushed through the shattered doorway and fell on him. They pounded him to the floor, pinned him under their weight, secured his limbs. He fought wildly, extravagantly, but his opponents were many and strong. They mastered him in a moment. They dragged him to the side wall and fettered him there with chains so massive that he could not break them. When the creatures left him, hurried out of the thronehall, he was helpless.
Foamfollower is placed in a position to watch the interchange between Covenant and Foul. The Unbeliever kneels on the floor, his shackled, bloodied hands over his face as his lip swells with poison, leprosy. He feels his disease taking root.
The Despiser then proceeds to awash Covenant with health. Strength and feeling flood through him. His leprosy gone, his weakness gone, his hunger gone. Covenant refuses it, however.But when he lowered his bloodied hands—when the swift poison of Foul’s touch made his lip blacken and swell so acutely that he could no longer bear to touch it—when he looked up again toward the Despiser, he was not abject. He was unbeaten.
Damn you, he muttered dimly. Damn you. It’s not that easy.
Deliberately, he closed his fingers of his halfhand around his ring.
The Despiser’s eyes raged at him, but Lord Foul controlled himself to say in a sneering, fatherly tone, “Come Unbeliever. Do not prolong this unpleasantness. You know that you cannot stand against me. In my own name I am wholly your superior. And I possess the Illearth Stone. I can blast the moon in it’s course, compel the oldest dead from their deep graves, spread ruin at my whim. Without effort I can tear every fiber of your being from its moor and scatter the wreck of your soul across the heavens.”
Then do it, Covenant muttered.
“Yet, I choose to forbear. I do not purpose harm against you. Only place your ring in my hand, and all your torment will be at an end. It is a small price to pay, Unbeliever.”
It’s not that easy.
“And I am not powerless to reward you. If you wish to share my rule over the Land, I will permit you. You will find I am not an uncongenial master. If you wish to preserve the life of your friend, Foamfollower, I will not demur—though he has offended me.” Foamfollower thrashed in his chains, struggled to protest, but he could not speak. “If you wish health, that also I can and will provide. Behold!”
Foul laughs at this, begins to shower Covenant with ridicule, asks him why he is so “rife with folly". Covenant tells him that he loves the Land and loathes Foul. The Despiser does not think that is a good enough answer, asks him again.”Health isn’t my problem, you’re the one that teaches lepers to hate themselves.”
Covenant knows better, however. He knows that only by affirming both Land and Unbelief within himself, can he preserve them both. “The place where the parallel lines of his impossible dilemma met.” It’s the “eye of the paradox”. This was the reason the Land had happened to him. Yet, he doesn’t say this to Foul.”Because I don’t believe it.”
“No?” the Despiser shouted with glee. “Still?” His laughter expressed perfect contempt. “Groveler, you are pathetic beyond price. Almost I am persuaded to keep you at my side. You would be a jester to lighten my burdens.” Still he catechized Covenant. “How is it possible that you can loathe or love where you do not believe?”
“Nevertheless.”
“How is it possible to disbelieve where you loathe and love?”
“Still.”
Lord Foul laughed again. “Do my ears betray me? Do you—after my Enemy has done all within his power to sway you—do you yet believe that this is a dream?”
“It isn’t real. But that doesn’t matter. That’s not important.”
“Then what is, groveler?”
“The Land. You.”
Once more, the Despiser laughed. But his mirth was short and vicious now; he sounded disturbed, as if there were something in Covenant which he could not understand. “The Land and Unbelief,” he jeered. “You poor, deranged soul! You cannot have both. They preclude each other.”
The Despiser then moves on to the question that was the seed of his forbearance for not ripping the ring from Covenant’s hand. Lord Foul feared that Covenant had somehow learned how to use the wild magic.
At first, Covenant considers lying, considers telling Foul that he has mastered the white gold. But he decides against that, he does not want his defense flawed by duplicity. He tells Foul the truth.”This wild magic is not part of your world. It violates your Unbelief. How can you use this power in which you do not believe?”
Power swells around Covenant then, Foul envelopes him in darkness and pain. Images bombard him. The Land, the people he loves, Joan, Roger all become leprous and diseased. Foul flings the horrors at him, pulls him down until he almost despairs.”I don’t know how to use it.” His voice stumbled thickly past his swollen lip. “I don’t know how to call it up. But I know it is real in the Land, I know how to trigger it. I know how to bring this bloody icebox down around your ears.”
The Despiser did not hesitate, doubt. He seemed to expand in Covenant’s sight as he roared savagely, “You will trigger nothing! I have endured enough of your insolence. Do you say that you are a leper? I will show you leprosy!”
And so the battle begins. Unbelief against Despite—White Gold against the Illearth Stone—Thomas Covenant against Lord Foul.Foul! He screamed. Foul! You can’t do this!
“I will do it,” came the mocking reply. “I am doing it.”
Stop it!
“Give me the ring.”
Never!
“Then enjoy what you have brought to pass. Behold! I have given you companions. The solitary leper has remade the world in his own image, so that he will not be alone.”
I won’t let you!
The Despiser laughed sardonically. “You will aid me before you die.”
“Never! Damn you! Never!”
Fury exalted Covenant—fury as hot as magma. A rage for lepers carried him beyond all his limits. He took one last look at the victims thronging innumerably before him. Then he began to struggle for freedom like a newborn man fighting his way out of old skin.
He seemed to be standing in the nowhere nothingness of the abyss, but he knew that his physical body still knelt on the floor of the thronehall. With a savage effort of will, he disregarded all sensory impressions, all appearances that prevented him from perceiving where he was. Trembling, jerking awkwardly, he levered his gaunt frame to its feet. The eyes of his body were blind, still caught in Lord Foul’s control, but he grated fiercely, “I see you, Foul.” He did not need eyes. He could sense with the nerves of his stiff cheeks the emanations of power around him.
He took three lumbering, tottering steps, and felt Foul suddenly surge toward him, rush to stop him. Before the Despiser could reach him, he raised his hands and fell fists-first at the Illearth Stone.
The instant his wedding brand struck the Stone, a hurricane of might exploded in his hand. Gales of green and white fire blasted through the air, shattered it like a bayamo. The veil of Lord Foul’s assault was shredded in a moment and blown away. Covenant found himself lying on the floor with a tornado of power gyring upward from his Halfhand.
He heaved to his feet. With on flex of his arms, he freed his wrist as if the shackles were a skein of lies.
The Despiser hurls him once more into the abyss of leprosy, forces Covenant to view images of the Land diseased by the Illearth Stone. But, the Unbeliever, remembering what Mhoram told him—you are the white gold—almost laughs at Lord Foul. The Stone can not corrupt him. He becomes wild magic, and to the Despiser he says. “You can’t stop me. You’ve broken too many Laws. And I’m outside the Law. It doesn’t control wild magic—it doesn’t control me. But it was the only thing that might have stopped me. You could have used it against me. Now it’s just me—it’s my will that makes the difference. I’m a leper, Foul. I can stand anything.”
The battle rages. Foul, in fury, hurls the power of the Stone at the Unbeliever, Covenant gets thrown back against the wall next to Foamfollower. Yet, Covenant’s will swells and he forces himself away from the wall, and he becomes equal to Foul’s attack. Power scales in fury throughout the thronehall. He succeeds in driving the Despiser away from the Stone, erupts a wall of wild magic between Foul and the Stone. He then surrounds the Despiser with wild magic, begins to penetrate his penumbra. Foul shrieks as his penumbra bursts into flames and shatters. Covenant bombards him with more power and the Despiser then begins to take form, becomes material, corporeal. When he is fully formed he goads Covenant—tells him to “make an end”
But Covenant does not.But before he could respond, try to articulate the emotions and intuitions which Lord Foul’s words called up in him, a sudden clap of vehemence splintered the silence of the thronehall. A great invisible door opened in the air at his back; without warning, strong presences, furious and abhorring, stood behind him. The violence of their emanations almost broke his concentrated hold on Lord Foul.
He clenched his will, steadied himself to face a shock, and turned.
He found himself looking up at tall figures like the one he had seen in the cave of the Earthblood under Melenkurion Skyweir. They towered above him, grisly and puissant; he seemed to see them through the stone rather then within the chamber.
They were the specters of the dead Lords. He recognized Kevin Landwaster son of Loric. Beside Kevin stood two other livid men whom he knew instinctively to be Loric Vilesilencer and Damelon Giantfriend. There were Prothall, Osondrea, a score of men and women Covenant had never met, never heard named. With them was Elena daughter of Lena. And behind and above them all rose another figure, a dominating man with hot prophetic eyes and one halfhand: Berek Earthfriend, the Lord-Fatherer.
In one voice like a thunder of abomination—one voice of outrage that shook Covenant to the marrow of his bones—they cried, “Slay him! It is within your power. Do not heed his treacherous lies. In the name of all Earth and health, slay him!”
The specters of the Lords join him. It is low at first, but exalts thunderously around the thronehall, diminishes Lord Foul to nothing. As the laughter fades, so do the specters of the Lords. Covenant and Foamfollower are now alone.In a voice thick with grief, he answered the Lords, “I can’t kill him. He always survives when you try to kill him. He comes back stronger than ever the next time. Despite is like that. I can’t kill him.”
His reply stunned them. For a moment, they trembled with astonishment and dismay. Then Kevin asked in horror, “Will you let him live?”
Covenant could not respond directly, could not give a direct answer. But he clung to the strait path of his intuition. For the first time since his battle with the Despiser had begun, he turned to Saltheart Foamfollower.
The Giant stood chained to the wall, watching avidly everything that happened. The bloody flesh of his wrists and ankles showed how hard he had tried to break free, and his face looked as if it had been wrung dry by all the things he had been forced to behold. But he was essentially unharmed, essentially whole. Deep in his cavernous eyes, he seemed to understand Covenant’s dilemma. “You have done well, my dear friend,” he breathed when Covenant met his gaze. “I trust whatever choice your heart makes.”
“There is no choice about it,” Covenant panted, fighting to hold back his tears. “I’m not going to kill him. He’ll just come back. I don’t want that on my head. No, Foamfollower—my friend. It’s up to you now. You—and them.” He nodded toward the livid, spectral Lords. “Joy is in the ears that hear—remember? You told me that. I’ve got joy for you to hear. Listen to me. I’ve beaten the Despiser—this time. The Land is safe—for now. I swear it. Now I want—Foamfollower!” Involuntary tears blurred his sight. “I want you to laugh. Take joy in it. Bring some joy into this bloody hole. Laugh!” He swung back to shout at the Lords, “Do you hear me? Let Foul alone! Heal yourselves!”
For a long moment that almost broke his will, there was no sound in the thronehall. Lord Foul blazed contempt at his captor; the Lords stood aghast, uncomprehending; Foamfollower hung in his chains as if the burden were too great for him to bear.
“Help me!” Covenant cried.
Then slowly his plea made itself felt. Some prophecy in his words touched the hearts that heard him. With a terrible effort, Saltheart Foamfollower, the last of the Giants, began to laugh.
Thomas Covenant then shambles over to the Illearth Stone, kneels beside it, and wraps his arm around. Wild magic erupts anew and the Stone pulses in his arms. He embraces the Stone seeking to crush it with his power.Covenant was weeping out of control now. The exhaustion of his ordeal had caught up with him. He felt too frail to lift his head, too weary to live any longer. Yet he had one more thing to do. He had promised that the Land would be safe. Now he had to ensure that safety.
“Foamfollower?” he wept. “My friend?” With his voice, he begged the Giant to understand him; he lacked the strength to articulate what he had to do.
“Do not fear for me,” Foamfollower replied. He sounded strangely proud, as if Covenant had honored him in some rare way. “Thomas Covenant, ur-Lord and Unbeliever, brave white gold wielder—I desire no other end. Do whatever you must, my friend. I am at Peace. I have beheld a marvelous story.”
Covenant nodded in the blindness of his tears. Foamfollower could make his own decisions. With a flick of an idea, he broke the Giant’s chains, so that Foamfollower could at least attempt to escape if he so chose. Then all Covenant’s awareness of his friend became ashes.
And now, with tears in my eyes yet again, there is only one thing I have left to say—The convulsion shook the Creche. Gaping cracks shot through the floors, sped up the walls, as if they were headlong in mad flight. The promontory itself began to quiver and groan. Muffled detonations sent great clouds of debris up through the cracks and crevices. Hotash Slay danced in rapid spouts. The towers leaned like willows in a bereaving wind.
With a blast that jolted the Sea, the whole center of the promontory exploded into the air. In a rain of boulders, Creche fragments as large as homes, villages, the wedge split open from tip to base. Accompanied by cataclysmic thunder, the rent halves toppled in ponderous, monumental agony away from each other into the Sea.
At once, ocean crashed into the gap from the east, and lava poured into it from the west. Their impact obscured in the steam and fiery sibilation the seething caldron of Ridjeck Thome’s collapse, the sky-shaking fury of sea and stone and fire—obscured everything except the power which blazed from the core of the destruction.
It was green-white—savage, wild—mounting hugely toward its apocalypse.
But the white dominated and prevailed.
Farewell, Saltheart Foamfollower!! Rockbrother and Giant!! “Joy is in the ears that hear.” Hail!!
(I know you just "used" this to beat Fist for "longest post ever"!) 
