The Wounded Land (28 page)

During the days of rain, the Mithil had turned directly northward; and now it grew unexpectedly broader, more troubled. Soon he descried what was happening. The raft was moving rapidly toward the confluence of the Mithil and another river.

Their speed left the companions no time for choice. Sunder shouted, “Hold!” Linden thrust her hair away from her face, tightened her grip. Covenant jammed his numb fingers in among the branches of the raft. Then the Mithil swept them spinning and tumbling into the turbulent center of the confluence.

The raft plunged end over end. Covenant felt himself yanked through the turmoil, and fought to hold his breath. But almost at once the current rushed the raft in another direction. Gasping for air, he shook water from his eyes and saw that now they were traveling northeastward.

For more than a league, the raft seemed to hurtle down the watercourse. But finally the new stream eased somewhat between its banks. Covenant started to catch his breath.

“What was that?” Linden panted.

Covenant searched his memory. “Must have been the Black River.” From Garroting Deep. And from
Melenkurion
Skyweir, where Elena had broken the Law of Death to summon Kevin Landwaster from his grave, and had died herself as a result. Covenant flinched at the recollection, and at the thought that perhaps none of the Land’s ancient forests had survived the Sunbane. Gritting himself, he added, “It separates the South and Center Plains.”

“Yes,” said the Graveler. “And now we must choose. Revelstone lies north of northwest from us. The Mithil no longer shortens our way.”

Covenant nodded. But the seine of his remembering brought up other things as well. “That’s all right. It won’t increase the distance.” He knew vividly where the Mithil River would take him. “Anyway, I don’t want to walk under this sun.”

Andelain.

He shivered at the suddenness of his hope and anxiety. If
aliantha
could endure the Sunbane, could not Andelain also preserve itself? Or had the chief gem and glory of the Land already been brought to ruin?

That thought outweighed his urgency to reach Revelstone. He estimated that they were about eighty leagues from Mithil Stonedown. Surely they had outdistanced any immediate pursuit. They could afford this digression.

He noticed that Sunder regarded him strangely. But the Graveler’s face showed no desire at all to brave the sun of pestilence afoot. And Linden seemed to have lost the will to care where the River carried them.

By turns, they began trying to get some rest after the strain of the confluence.

For a time, Covenant’s awareness of his surroundings was etiolated by memories of Andelain. But then a flutter of color almost struck his face, snatching his attention to the air over his head. The atmosphere thronged with bugs of all kinds. Butterflies the size of his open hand, with wings like flakes of chiaroscuro, winked and skimmed erratically over the water; huge horseflies whined past him; clusters of gnats swirled like mirages. They marked the air with constant hums and buzzings, like a rumor of distant violence. The sound made him uneasy. Itching skirled down his spine.

Sunder showed no specific anxiety. But Linden’s agitation mounted. She seemed inexplicably cold; her teeth chattered until she locked her jaws to stop them. She searched the sky and the riverbanks apprehensively, looking—

The air became harder to breathe, humid and dangerous.

Covenant was momentarily deaf to the swelling hum. But then he heard it—a raw thick growling like the anger of bees.

Bees!

The noise augered through him. He gaped in dumb horror as a swarm dense enough to obscure the sun rose abruptly out of the brush along the River and came snarling toward the raft.

“Heaven and Earth!” Sunder gasped.

Linden thrashed the water, clutched at Covenant. “Raver!” Her voice scaled into a shriek. “Oh, my God!”

The presence of the Raver, lurid and tangible, burned through Linden Avery’s nerves like a discharge of lightning, stunning her. She could not move. Covenant thrust her behind him, turned to face the onslaught. Her cry drowned as water splashed over her.

Then the swarm hit. Black-yellow bodies as long as her thumb clawed the air, smacked into the River as if they had been driven mad. She felt the Raver all around her—a spirit of ravage and lust threshing viciously among the bees.

Impelled by fear, she dove.

The water under the raft was clear; she saw Sunder diving near her. He gripped his knife and the Sunstone as if he intended to fight the swarm by hand.

Covenant remained on the surface. His legs and body writhed; he must have been swatting wildly at the bees.

At once, her fear changed directions, became fear for him. She lunged toward him, grabbed one ankle, heaved him downward as hard as she could. He sank suddenly in her grasp. Two bees still clung to his face. In a fury of revulsion, she slapped them away. Then she had to go up for air.

Sunder rose nearby. As he moved, he wielded his knife. Blood streamed from his left forearm.

She split the surface, gulped air, and dove again.

The Graveler did not. Through the distortion of the water, she watched red sunfire raging from the
orcrest
. The swarm concentrated darkly around Sunder. His legs scissored, lifting his shoulders. Power burst from him, igniting the swarm; bees flamed like hot spangles.

An instant later, the attack ended.

Linden broke water again, looked around rapidly. But the Raver was gone. Burnt bodies littered the face of the Mithil.

Sunder hugged the raft, gasping as if the exertion of so much force had ruptured something in his chest.

She ignored him. Her swift scan showed her that Covenant had not regained the surface.

Snatching air into her lungs, she went down for him.

She wrenched herself in circles, searching the water. At first, she could find nothing. Then she spotted him. He was some distance away across the current, struggling upward. His movements were desperate. In spite of the interference of the River, she could see that he was not simply desperate for air.

With all the strength of her limbs, she swam after him.

He reached the surface; but his body went on thrashing as if he were still assailed by bees.

She raised her head into the air near him, surged to his aid.

“Hellfire!” he spat like an ague of fear or agony. Water streamed through his hair and his ragged beard, as if he had been immersed in madness. His hands slapped at his face.

“Covenant!” Linden shouted.

He did not hear her. Wildly he fought invisible bees, pounded his face. An inchoate cry tore through his throat.

“Sunder!” she panted. “Help me!” Ducking around Covenant, she caught him across the chest, began to drag him toward the bank. The sensation of his convulsions sickened her; but she bit down her nausea, wrestled him through the River.

The Graveler came limping after her, dragging the raft. His mien was tight with pain. A thin smear of blood stained his lips.

Reaching the bank, she dredged Covenant out of the water. Spasms ran through all his muscles, resisting her involuntarily. But his need gave her strength; she stretched him out on the ground, knelt at his side to examine him.

For one horrific moment, her fear returned, threatening to swamp her. She did not want to see what was wrong with him. She had already seen too much; the wrong of the Sunbane had excruciated her nerves so long, so intimately, that she half believed she had lost her mind. But she was a doctor; she had chosen this work for reasons which brooked no excuse of fear or repugnance or incapacity. Setting her self aside, she bent the new dimension of her senses toward Covenant.

Clenchings shook him like bursts of brain-fire. His face contorted around the two bee stings. The marks were bright red and swelling rapidly; but they were not serious. Or they were serious in an entirely different way.

Linden swallowed bile, and probed him more deeply.

His leprosy became obvious to her. It lay in his flesh like a malignant infestation, exigent and dire. But it was quiescent.

Something else raged in him. Baring her senses to it, she suddenly remembered what Sunder had said about the sun of pestilence—and what he had implied about insects. He stood over her. In spite of his pain, he swatted grimly at mosquitoes the size of dragonflies, keeping them off Covenant. She bit her lips in apprehension, looked down at Covenant’s right forearm.

His skin around the pale scars left by Marid’s fangs and Sunder’s poniard was already bloated and dark, as if his arm had suffered a new infusion of venom. The swelling worsened as she gazed at it. It was tight and hot, as dangerous as a fresh snakebite. Again it gave her a vivid impression of moral wrong, as if the poison were as much spiritual as physical.

Marid’s venom had never left Covenant’s flesh. She had been disturbed by hints of this in days past, but had failed to grasp its significance. Repulsed by
aliantha
, the venom had remained latent in him, waiting—Both Marid and the bees had been formed by the Sunbane: both had been driven by Ravers. The bee-stings had triggered this reaction.

That must have been the reason for the swarm’s attack, the reason why the Raver had chosen bees to work its will. To produce this relapse.

Covenant gaped back at her sightlessly. His convulsions began to fade as his muscles weakened. He was slipping into shock. For a moment, she glimpsed a structure of truth behind his apparent paranoia, his belief in an Enemy who sought to destroy him. All her instincts rebelled against such a conception. But now for an instant she seemed to see something deliberate in the Sunbane, something intentional and cunning in these attacks on Covenant.

The glimpse reft her of self-trust. She knelt beside him, unable to move or choose. The same dismay which had incapacitated her when she had first seen Joan came upon her.

But then the sounds of pain reached her—the moan of Sunder’s wracked breathing. She looked up at him, asking mutely for answers. He must have guessed intuitively the connection between venom and bees. That was why he defied his own hurt to prevent further insect bites. Meeting her sore gaze, he said, “Something in me has torn.” He winced at every word. “It is keen—but I think not perilous. Never have I drawn
such power from the Sunstone.” She could feel his pain as a palpable emission; but he had clearly rent some of the ligatures between his ribs, not broken any of the ribs themselves, or damaged anything vital.

Yet his hurt, and his resolute self-expenditure on Covenant’s behalf, restored her to herself. A measure of her familiar severity returned, steadying the labor of her heart. She climbed to her feet. “Come on. Let’s get him back in the water.”

Sunder nodded. Gently they lifted Covenant down the bank. Propping his left arm over the raft so that his right arm could hang free in the cool water, they shoved out into the center of the current. Then they let the River carry them downstream under the bale of a red-ringed sun.

During the remainder of the afternoon, Linden struggled against her memory of Joan, her sense of failure. She could almost hear her mother whining for death. Covenant regained consciousness several times, lifted his head; but the poison always dragged him back before he could speak. Through the water, she watched the black tumescence creep avidly up his arm. It seemed much swifter than the previous time; Marid’s poison had increased in virulence during its dormancy. The sight blurred her eyes. She could not silence the fears gnawing at her heart.

Then, before sunset, the River unbent among a clump of hills into a long straight line leading toward a wide ravine which opened on the Mithil. The sides of the ravine were as sheer as a barranca, and they reflected the low sunshine with a strange brilliance. The ravine was like a vale of diamonds; its walls were formed of faceted crystal which caught the light and returned it in delicate shades of white and pink. When the sun of pestilence dipped toward the horizon, washing the terrain in a bath of vermilion, the barranca became a place of rare glory.

People moved on the river shore; but they gave no indication that they saw the raft. The River was already in shadow, and the brightness of the crystal was dazzling. Soon they left the bank and went up into the ravine.

Linden and Sunder shared a look, and began to steer toward the mouth of the barranca. In dusk macerated only by the last gleamings along the vale rim, they pulled their raft partway up the shore and carefully eased Covenant to dry ground. His arm was black and thick to the shoulder, cruelly pinched by both his ring and his shirt, and he moaned when they moved him.

She sat beside him, stroked his forehead; but her gaze was fixed on Sunder. “I don’t know what to do,” she said flatly. “We’re going to have to ask these people for help.”

The Graveler stood with his arms around his chest, cradling his pain. “We cannot. Have you forgotten Mithil Stonedown? We are blood that these people may shed without cost to themselves. And the Rede denounces him. I redeemed you from Mithil Stonedown. Who will redeem us here?”

She gripped herself. “Then why did we stop?”

He shrugged, winced. “We must have food. Little
ussusimiel
remains to us.”

“How do you propose to get it?” She disliked the sarcasm in her tone, but could not stifle it.

“When they sleep”—Sunder’s eyes revealed his reluctance as clearly as words—“I will attempt to steal what we must have.”

Linden frowned involuntarily. “What about guards?”

“They will ward the hills, and the River from the hills. There is no other approach to this place. If they have not yet observed us, perhaps we are safe.”

She agreed. The thought of stealing was awkward to her; but she recognized that they had no alternative. “I’ll come with you.”

Sunder began to protest; she stopped him with a brusque shake of her head. “You’re not exactly healthy. If nothing else, you’ll need me to watch your back. And,” she sighed, “I want to get some
mirkfruit
. He needs it.”

The Graveler’s face was unreadable in the twilight. But he acquiesced mutely. Retrieving the last of his melons from the raft, he began to cut them open.