The Wounded Land (17 page)

“That is not possible.” Sunder spoke without raising his head. “You have no more than two score years.” His hands twisted. “But that signifies little beside the Rede of the Clave. Though the Riders are loathly to us, their power and knowledge is beyond doubt. They have foretold your coming for a generation. And they are nigh. A Rider will arrive soon to enforce the will of the Clave. Retribution for any disregard would be sore upon us. Their word is one we dare not defy. Our sole concern is that the shedding of your blood may aid the survival of the Stonedown.”

“Wait,” Covenant objected. “One thing at a time.” Pain and exasperation vied in his head. “Three thousand years ago, a man with a halfhand and a white gold ring saved the Land from being completely destroyed by the Gray Slayer. Do you mean to tell me that’s been forgotten? Nobody remembers the story?”

The Graveler shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I have heard such a tale—perhaps I alone in Mithil Stonedown. Nassic my father spoke of such things. But he was mad—lost in his wits like Jous and Prassan before him. He would have been sacrificed to the need of the Stonedown, had Kalina his wife and I permitted it.”

Sunder’s tone was a revelation to Covenant. It provided him a glimpse of the Graveler’s self-conflict. Sunder was torn between what his father had taught him and what the Stonedown accepted as truth. Consciously he believed what his people believed; but the convictions of his half-mad father worked on him below the surface, eroding his confidence. He was a man unreconciled to himself.

This insight softened Covenant’s vexation. He sensed a range of possibilities in Sunder, intuitions of hope; but he handled them1 gingerly. “All right,” he said. “Let that pass. How is killing us going to help you?”

“I am the Graveler. With blood I am able to shape the Sunbane.” The muscles along his jaw clenched and relaxed without rhythm or purpose. “Today we lie under the desert sun—today, and for perhaps as many as three days more. Before this day, the sun of rain was upon us,
and it followed the sun of pestilence. Our herd needs forage, as we need crops. With your blood, I will be able to draw water from the hard earth. I will be able to raise an acre, perhaps two acres, of grass and grain. Life for the Stonedown, until the fertile sun comes again.”

This made no sense to Covenant. Fumbling for comprehension, he asked, “Can’t you get water out of the river?”

“There is no water in the river.”

Abruptly Linden spoke. “No water?” The words conveyed the depth of her incredulity. “That’s not possible. It rained yesterday.”

“I have said,” Sunder snapped like a man in pain, “that we lie under the desert sun. Have you not beheld it?”

In his astonishment, Covenant turned to Linden. “Is he telling the truth?”

Sunder’s head jerked up. His eyes nicked back and forth between Covenant and Linden.

Through her teeth, she said, “Yes. It’s true.”

Covenant trusted her hearing. He swung back to the Graveler. “So there’s no water.” Steadiness rose in him—a mustering of his resources. “Let that pass, too.” The throb in his head insisted on his helplessness; but he closed his ears to it. “Tell me how you do it. How you shape the Sunbane.”

Sunder’s eyes expressed his reluctance. But Covenant held the Graveler with his demand. Whatever strength of will Sunder possessed, he was too unsure of himself now to refuse. How many times had his father told him about the Unbeliever? After a moment, he acceded. “I am the Graveler.” He reached a hand into his jerkin. “I bear the Sunstone.”

Almost reverently, he drew out a piece of rock half the size of his fist. The stone was smooth, irregularly shaped. By some trick of its surface, it appeared transparent, but nothing showed through it. It was like a hole in his hand.

“Hellfire,” Covenant breathed. Keen relief ran through him. Here was one hard solid piece of hope.
“Orcrest.”

The Graveler peered at him in surprise. “Do you have knowledge of the Sunstone?”

“Sunder.” Covenant spoke stiffly to control his excitement and anxiety. “If you try to kill us with that thing, people are going to get hurt.”

The Stonedownor shook his head. “You will not resist.
Mirkfruit
will be broken in your faces—the same melon which made you captive. There will be no pain.”

“Oh, there will be pain,” growled Covenant. “You’ll be in pain.” Deliberately he put pressure on the Graveler. “You’ll be the only one in this whole Stonedown who knows you’re destroying the last hope of the Land. It’s too bad your father died. He would have found some way to convince you.”

“Enough!” Sunder almost shouted at the laceration of his spirit. “I have uttered the words I came to speak. In this at least I have shown you what courtesy I may. If there is aught else that you would say, then say it and have done. I must be about my work.”

Covenant did not relent. “What about Marid?”

Sunder jerked to his feet, stood glowering down at Covenant. “He is a slayer, unshriven by any benefit to the Stonedown—a violator of the Rede which all accept. He will be punished.”

“You’re going to punish him?” Covenant’s control faltered in agitation. “What for?” He struggled erect, thrust his face at the
Graveler. “Didn’t you hear what I told you? He’s innocent. He was taken over by a Raver. It wasn’t his fault.”

“Yes,” Sunder retorted. “And he is my friend. But you say he is innocent, and your words have no meaning. We know nothing of any Raver. The Rede is the Rede. He will be punished.”

“Goddamn it!” snapped Covenant, “did you touch him?”

“Am I a fool? Yes, I put my hand upon him. The fire of his guilt is gone. He has awakened and is tormented with the memory of a noisome thing which came upon him out of the rain. Yet his act remains. He will be punished.”

Covenant wanted to take hold of the Graveler, shake him. But his efforts only made the bonds cut deeper into his wrists. Darkly he asked, “How?”

“He will be bound.” The soft violence of Sunder’s tone sounded like self-flagellation. “Borne out into the Plains during the night. The Sunbane will have no mercy for him.” In ire or regret, he evaded Covenant’s glare.

With an effort, Covenant put aside the question of Marid’s fate, postponed everything he did not understand about the Sunbane. Instead he asked, “Are you really going to kill Kalina?”

Sunder’s hands twitched as if they wanted Covenant’s throat. “Should it ever come to pass that I am free to leave this room,” he rasped acidly, “I will do my utmost to heal her. Her blood will not be shed until her death is written on her forehead for all to see. Do you seek to prevent me from her side?”

The Graveler’s distress touched Covenant. His indignation fell away. He shook his head, then urged quietly, “Untie Linden. Take her with you. She’s a healer. Maybe she—”

Linden interrupted him. “No.” Despite its flatness, her voice carried a timbre of despair. “I don’t even have my bag. She needs a hospital, not wishful thinking. Let him make his own decisions.”

Covenant wheeled toward her. Was this the same woman who had insisted with such passion,
I can help her!
Her face was half hidden by her hair. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“Third-degree burns”—she articulated each word as if it were a mask for the contradictions of her heart—“are hard enough to treat under the best circumstances. If he wants to commit euthanasia, that’s his business. Don’t be so goddamn judgmental.”

Without transition, she addressed Sunder. “We need food.”

He regarded her suspiciously. “Linden Avery, there are things that I would give you for your ease, but food is not among them. We do not waste food on any man, woman, or child who is under judgment. Kalina my mother will not be given food unless I am able to show that she can be healed.”

She did not deign to look at him. “We also need water.”

Cursing sourly, Sunder turned on his heel, slapped the curtain out of his way. As he left, he snapped, “You will have water.” Outside he yelled at someone, “The prisoners require water!” Then he passed beyond earshot.

Covenant watched the swaying of the curtain, and strove to still his confusion. He could feel his pulse beating like the rhythm of slow flame in the bones of his skull. What was wrong with Linden? Moving carefully, he went to her. She sat with her gaze lowered, her features shrouded by the dimness of the room. He sank to his knees to ask her what was the matter.

She faced him harshly, shook her hair. “I must be hysterical. These people are planning to kill us. For some silly reason, that bothers me.”

He studied her for a moment, measuring her belligerence, then retreated to sit against the opposite wall. What else could he do? She was already foundering; he could not insist that she surrender her secrets to him. In her straits, during his first experience with the Land, he had lost himself so badly—He closed his eyes, groped for courage. Then he sighed, “Don’t worry about it. They’re not going to kill us.”

“Naturally not.” Her tone was vicious. “You’re Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and white gold wielder. They won’t dare.”

Her scorn hurt him; but he made an effort to suppress his anger. “We’ll get out of here tonight.”

“How?” she demanded bluntly.

“Tonight”—he could not silence his weariness—“I’ll try to show Sunder why he ought to let us go.”

A moment later, someone pushed two large stoneware bowls of water past the curtain. Linden reacted to them as if they were the only explicable things in the room. She shuttled toward them on her knees, lowered her head to drink deeply.

When Covenant joined her, she ordered him to use the bowl she had used. He obeyed to avoid an argument; but her reasons became clear when she told him to put his hands in the still-full bowl. The water might reduce their swelling, allow more blood past the bonds—perhaps even loosen the bonds themselves.

Apparently his wrists were tied with leather; as he followed her instructions, the cool fluid palliated his discomfort; and a short while later he felt a tingle of recovery in his palms. He tried to thank her with a smile; but she did not respond. When he left the water, she took his place, soaked her own hands for a long time.

Gradually Covenant’s attention drifted away from her. The sun was beginning to slant toward afternoon; a bright hot sliver of light dissected by iron bars lay on the floor. He rested his head, and thought about the Sunstone.

Orcrest
—a stone of power. The former masters of stone-lore had used
orcrest
to wield the Earthpower in a variety of ways—to shed light, break droughts, test truth. If Sunder’s Sunstone were indeed
orcrest
—

But what if it were not? Covenant returned to the dread which had struck him in Nassic’s hut.
The world is not what it was
. If there were no Earthpower—

Something broken
. He could not deny his anguish. He needed
orcrest
, needed its power; he had to have a trigger. He had never been able to call up wild magic of his own volition. Even in the crisis of his final confrontation with the Despiser, he would have been lost utterly without the catalyst of the Illearth Stone. If the Sunstone were not truly
orcrest
—

He wished that he could feel his ring; but even if his hands had not been bound, his fingers would have been too numb. Leper, he muttered. Make it work. Make it. The sunlight became a white cynosure, growing until it throbbed like the pain in his head. Slowly his mind filled with a brightness more fearsome and punishing than any night. He opposed it as if he were a fragment of the last kind dark which healed and renewed.

Then Linden was saying, “Covenant. You’ve slept enough. It’s dangerous if you have a concussion. Covenant.”

The dazzle in his brain blinded him momentarily; he had to squint to see that the room was dim. Sunset faintly colored the air. The sky beyond the window lay in twilight.

He felt stiff and groggy, as if his life had congealed within him while he slept. His pain had burrowed into the bone; but it, too, seemed imprecise—stupefied by fatigue. At Linden’s urging, he drank the remaining water. It cleared his throat, but could not unclog his mind.

For a long time, they sat without speaking. Night filled the valley like an exudation from the mountains; the air turned cool as the earth lost its warmth to the clear heavens. At first, the stars were as vivid as language—an articulation of themselves across the distance and the unfathomable night. But then the sky lost its depth as the moon rose.

“Covenant,” Linden breathed, “talk to me.” Her voice was as fragile as ice. She was near the limit of her endurance.

He searched for something that would help them both, fortify her and focus him.

“I don’t want to die like this,” she grated. “Without even knowing why.”

He ached because he could not explain why, could not give her his sense of purpose. But he knew a story which might help her to understand what was at stake. Perhaps it was a story they both needed to hear. “All right,” he said quietly. “I’ll tell you how this world came to be created.”

She did not answer. After a moment, he began.

Even to himself, his voice sounded bodiless, as if the dark were speaking for him. He was trying to reach out to her with words, though he could not see her, and had no very clear idea of who she was. His tale was a simple one; but for him its simplicity grew out of long distillation. It made even his dead nerves yearn as if he were moved by an eloquence he did not possess.

In the measureless heavens of the universe, he told her, where life and space were one, and the immortals strode through an ether without limitation, the Creator looked about him, and his heart swelled with the desire to make a new thing to gladden his bright children. Summoning his strength and subtlety, he set about the work which was his exaltation.

First he forged the Arch of Time, so that the world he wished to make would have a place to be. And then within the Arch he formed the Earth. Wielding the greatness of his love and vision as tools, he made the world in all its beauty, so that no eye could behold it without joy. And then upon the Earth he placed all the myriads of its inhabitants—beings to perceive and cherish the beauty which he made. Striving for perfection because it was the nature of creation to desire all things flawless, he made the inhabitants of the Earth capable of creation, and striving, and love for the world. Then he withdrew his hand, and beheld what he had done.