The Wounded Land (23 page)

Sunder fell silent. After a moment, Linden asked, “What is that?” She panted the words raggedly.

“A song,” said the Graveler. “Nassic my father sang it—whenever I became angry at his folly. But I have no understanding of it, though I have seen the white ring, and the wild magic shining with a terrible loveliness.”

Terrible, Covenant breathed as if he were dreaming.

Later, Linden said, “Keep talking. It helps—Do you know any other songs?”

“What is life without singing?” Sunder responded. “We have songs for sowing and for reaping—songs to console children during the sun of pestilence—songs to honor those whose blood is shed for the Stonedown. But I have set aside my right to sing them.” He made no effort to conceal his bitterness. “I will sing for you one of the songs of a-Jeroth, as it is taught by the Riders of the Clave.”

He straightened his shoulders, harrowing Covenant’s arm. When he began, his voice was hoarse with dust, short-winded with exertion; but it suited his song.

The Graveler sighed. “Her children are the inhabitants of the Earth. It is said that elsewhere in the Earth—across the seas, beyond the mountains—live beings who have kept faith. But the Land is the home of the faithless, and on the descendants of betrayal the Sunbane wreaks the Master’s wrath.”

Covenant expostulated mutely. He knew as vividly as leprosy that the Clave’s view of history was a lie, that the people of the Land had been faithful against Lord Foul for millennia. But he could not understand how such a lie had come to be believed. Time alone did not account for this corruption.

He wanted to deny Sunder’s tale. But his swelling had risen black and febrile halfway to his shoulder. When he tried to find words, the darkness returned.

After a time, he heard Linden say, “You keep mentioning the Riders of the Clave.” Her voice was constricted, as if she suffered from several broken ribs. “What do they ride?”

“Great beasts,” Sunder answered, “which they name Coursers.”

“Horses?” she panted.

“Horses? I do not know this word.”

Do not—? Covenant groaned as if the pain in his arm were speaking. Not know the Ranyhyn? He saw a sudden memory in the heat-haze: the great horses of Ra rearing. They had taught him a lesson he could hardly bear about the meaning of fidelity. Now they were gone? Dead? The desecration which Lord Foul had wrought upon the Land seemed to have no end.

“Beasts are few in the Land,” Sunder went on, “for how can they endure the Sunbane? My people have herds—some goats, a few cattle—only because large effort is made to preserve their lives. The animals are penned in a cave near the mountains, brought out only when the Sunbane permits.

“But it is otherwise with the Coursers of the Clave. They are bred in Revelstone for the uses of the Riders—beasts of great swiftness and size. It is said that those on their backs are warded from the Sunbane.” Grimly he concluded, “We must evade all such aid if we wish to live.”

No Ranyhyn? For a time, Covenant’s grief became greater than his pain. But the sun was coquelicot malice in his face, blanching what was left of him. The sleeve of his T-shirt formed a noose around his black arm; and his arm itself on Sunder’s shoulder seemed to be raised above him like a mad, involuntary salute to the Sunbane. Even sorrow was leprosy, numb corruption: meaningless and irrefragable. Venom slowly closed around his heart.

Sometime later, the darkness bifurcated, so that it filled his head, and yet he could gaze out at it. He lay on his back, looking at the moon; the shadows of the riverbanks rose on either side. A breeze drifted over him, but it seemed only to fan his fever. The molten lead in his arm contradicted the taste of
aliantha
in his mouth.

His head rested in Linden’s lap. Her head leaned against the slope of the watercourse; her eyes were closed; perhaps she slept. But he had lain with his head in a woman’s lap once before, and knew the danger.
Of your own volition—
He bared his teeth at the moon. “It’s going to kill me.” The words threatened to strangle him. His body went rigid, straining against invisible poison. “I’ll never give you the ring. Never.”

Then he understood that he was delirious. He watched himself, helpless, while he faded in and out of nightmare, and the moon crested overhead.

Eventually he heard Sunder rouse Linden. “We must journey now for a time,” the Graveler said softly, “if we wish to find new
aliantha
. We have consumed all that is here.”

She sighed as if the vigil she kept galled her soul.

“Does he hold?” asked Sunder.

She shifted so that she could get to her feet. “It’s the
aliantha
,” she murmured. “If we keep feeding him—”

Ah, you are stubborn yet
. Are stubborn yet stubborn yet.

Then Covenant was erect, crucified across the shoulders of his companions. At first, he suffered under unquiet dreams of Lord Foul, of Marid lying throat-cut beneath an angry sun. But later he grew still, drifted into visionary fields—dew-bedizened leas decked with eglantine and meadow rue. Linden walked among them. She was Lena and Atiaran: strong, and strongly hurt; capable of love; thwarted. And she was Elena, corrupted by a misbegotten hate—child of rape, who destroyed herself to break the Law of Death because she believed that the dead could bear the burdens of the living.

Yet she was none of these. She was herself, Linden Avery, and her touch cooled his forehead. His arm was full of ashes, and his sleeve no longer cut into the swelling. Noon held the watercourse in a vise of heat; but he could breathe, and see. His heart beat unselfconsciously. When he looked up at her, the sun made her hair radiant about her head.

“Sunder.” Her tone sounded like tears. “He’s going to be all right.”

“A rare poison, this aliantha,” the Graveler replied grimly. “For that lie, at least, the Clave must give an accounting.”

Covenant wanted to speak; but he was torpid in the heat, infant-weak. He shifted his hips in the sand, went back to sleep.

When he awakened again, there was sunset above him. He lay with his head on Linden’s lap under the west bank of the river, and the sky was streaked with orange and pink, sunlight striking through dust-laden air. He felt brittle as an old bone; but he was lucid and alive. His beard itched. The swelling had receded past his elbow; his forearm had faded from blackness to the lavender of shadows. Even the bruises on his face seemed to have healed. His shirt was long dry now, sparing him the smell of blood.

Dimness obscured Linden’s mien; but she was gazing down at him, and he gave her a wan smile. “I dreamed about you.”

“Something good, I hope.” She sounded like the shadows.

“You were knocking at my door,” he said because his heart was full of relief. “I opened it, and shouted, ‘Goddamn it, if I wanted visitors I’d post a sign!’ You gave me a right cross that almost broke my jaw. It was love at first sight.”

At that, she turned her head away as if he had hurt her. His smile fell apart. Immediately his relief became the old familiar ache of loneliness, isolation made more poignant by the fact that she was not afraid of him. “Anyway,” he muttered with a crooked grimace like an apology, “it made sense at the time.”

She did not respond. Her visage looked like a helm in the crepuscular air, fortified against any affection or kinship.

A faint distant pounding accentuated the twilight; but Covenant hardly heard it until Sunder leaped suddenly down the east bank into the watercourse. “Rider!” he cried, rushing across the sand to crouch at Linden’s side. “Almost I was seen.”

Linden coiled under Covenant, poised herself to move. He clambered into a sitting position, fought his heart and head for balance. He was in no condition to flee.

Fright sharpened Linden’s whisper. “Is he coming this way?”

“No,” replied Sunder quickly. “He goes to Mithil Stonedown.”

“Then we’re safe?” Already the noise was almost gone.

“No. The Stonedown will tell him of our flight. He will not ignore the escape of the halfhand and the white ring.”

Her agitation increased. “He’ll come after us?”

“Beyond doubt. The Stonedown will not give pursuit. Though they have lost the Sunstone, they will fear to encounter Marid. But no such fear will restrain the Rider. At the sun’s rising—if not before—he will be ahunt for us.” In a tone like a hard knot, he concluded, “We must go.”

“Go?” Linden murmured in distraction. “He’s still too weak.” But an instant later she pulled herself erect, “We’ll have to.”

Covenant did not hesitate. He extended a hand to Sunder. When the Graveler raised him to his feet, he rested on Sunder’s shoulder while frailty whirled in his head, and forced his mouth to shape words. “How far have we come?”

“We are no more than six leagues by the River from Mithil Stonedown,” Sunder answered. “See,” he said, pointing southward. “It is not far.”

Rising there roseate in the sunset were mountain-heads—the west wall of the Mithil valley. They seemed dangerously near. Six! Covenant groaned to himself. In two days. Surely a Rider could cover that distance in one morning.

He turned back to his companions. Standing upright in the waterway, he had better light; he could see them clearly. Loss and
self-doubt, knowledge of lies and fear of truth, had burrowed into Sunder’s countenance. He had been bereft of everything which had enabled him to accept what he had done to his son, to his wife. In exchange, he had been given a weak driven man who defied him, and a hope no larger than a wedding band.

And Linden, too, was suffering. Her skin had been painfully sunburned. She was caught in a world she did not know and had not chosen, trapped in a struggle between forces she could not comprehend. Covenant was her only link to her own life; and she had almost lost him. Ordinary mortality was not made to meet such demands. And yet she met them and refused even to accept his gratitude. She stored up pain for herself as if no other being had the right to touch her, care about her.

Regret raked at Covenant’s heart. He had too much experience with the way other people bore the cost of his actions.

But he accepted it. There was a promise in such pain. It gave him power. With power, he had once wrested meaning for all the blood lost in his name from Lord Foul’s worst Despite.

For a moment while his companions waited, trying to contain their haste, he gave himself a VSE. Then he said tightly, “Come on. I can walk,” and began to shamble northward along the watercourse.

With the thought of a Rider pressing against his back, he kept his legs in motion for half a league. But the aftermath of the venom had left him tabid. Soon he was forced to ask for help. He turned to Sunder; but the Graveler told him to rest, then scrambled out of the riverbed.

Covenant folded unwillingly to the ground, sat trying to find an answer to the incapacity which clung to his bones. As the moon rose, Sunder returned with a double handful of
aliantha
.

Eating his share of the treasure-berries, Covenant felt new strength flow into him, new healing. He needed water, but his thirst was not acute. When he was done, he was able to regain his feet, walk again.

With the help of frequent rests, more
aliantha
, and support from his companions, he kept moving throughout the night. Darkness lay cool and soothing on the South Plains, as if all the fiery malison of the Sunbane had been swept away, absorbed by the gaps of midnight between the stars. And the sandy bottom of the Mithil made easy going. He drove himself. The Clave had commanded his death. Under the moon, he held his weakness upright; but after moonset, his movements became a long stagger of mortality, dependent and visionless.

They rested before dawn; but Sunder roused them as sunrise drew near. “The doom of the Sunbane approaches,” he murmured. “I have seen that your footwear spares you. Yet you will ease my heart if you join me.” He nodded toward a broad plane of rock nearby—clean stone large enough to protect a score of people.

Trembling with exhaustion, Covenant tottered to his feet. Together the companions stood on the rock to meet the day.

When the sun broke the horizon, Sunder let out a cry of exultation. The brown was gone. In its place, the sun wore a coronal of chrysoprase. The light green touch on Covenant’s face was balmy and pleasant, like a caress after the cruel pressure of the desert sun.

“A fertile sun!” Sunder crowed. “This will hamper pursuit, even for a Rider.” Leaping off the rock as if he had been made young again, he hurried to find a clear patch of sand. With the haft of his poniard, he plowed two swift furrows across the sand; and in them he planted a
handful of his
ussusimiel
seeds. “First we will have food!” he called. “Can water be far behind?”