The Wounded Land (40 page)

Then the companions were manhandled down a narrow crevice into the canyon of Stonemight Woodhelven.

Linden had never seen a Woodhelven before, and the sight of it revolted her. The carelessly made homes, the slovenly people, the blood-eagerness of the Graveler—these things debased the arduous rectitude she had learned to see in people like Sunder and Hollian. But everything else paled when she caught her first glimpse of the Graveler’s steaming, baleful green stone. It flooded her eyes with ill, stung her nostrils like virulent acid; it dwarfed every other power she had encountered, outshone everything except the Sunbane itself. That emerald chip was the source of the surrounding ruin, the cause of the imminent and uncaring wildness of the Woodhelvennin. Tears blinded her. Spasms clenched her mind like a desire to vomit. Yet she could not deafen herself to the Graveler’s glee when that woman announced her intention to slay her captives the next morning.

Then Linden and the Stonedownors were impelled into a rude hut on stilts, and left to face death as best they could. She could not resist. She had reached a crisis of self-protection. This close to the Stonemight, she was always aware of it. Its emanations leeched at her heart, sucked her toward dissolution. Rocking against the wall to remind herself that she still existed, still possessed a separate physical identity, she repeated, No, never again. She iterated the words as if they were a litany against evil, and fought for preservation.

She needed an answer to Joan, to venom and Ravers, to the innominate power of the Stonemight. But the only answer she found was to huddle within herself and close her mind as if she were one of her parents, helpless to meet life, avid for death.

Yet when dawn came, the door of the hut was flung open, not by the Graveler or any of the Woodhelvennin, but by a Rider of the Clave. The fertile sun vivified his stark red robe, etched the outlines of his black
rukh
, made the stiff thrust of his beard look like a grave digger’s spade. He was tall with authority and unshakably confident. “Come,” he said as if disobedience were impossible. “I am Santonin na-Mhoram-in. You are mine.” To Sunder’s glower and Hollian’s groan, he replied with a smile like the blade of a scimitar.

Outside the Woodhelvennin stood moaning and pleading. The Graveler protested abjectly. But Santonin compelled her. Weeping she surrendered her Stonemight. Another man delivered to him the Stonedownors’ Sunstone,
lianar
, knives.

Watching the transaction, Linden was unable to think anything except that Covenant would return from Andelain soon, and his companions would be gone. For one mad instant, Santonin’s smile almost drew her to confess Covenant’s existence; she wanted to keep him from falling into the hands of Stonemight Woodhelven. But Sunder and Hollian
were silent; and their silence reminded her that the Clave desired Covenant’s death. With the remnants of her will, she swallowed everything which might betray him.

After that, her will was taken from her altogether. Under the green doom of the sun, Santonin na-Mhoram-in ignited his
rukh
. Coercion sprang from the blaze, seized possession of her soul. All choice left her. At his word, she mounted Santonin’s Courser. The shred of her which remained watched Sunder and Hollian as they also obeyed. Then Santonin took them away from Stonemight Woodhelven. Away toward Revelstone.

His control could not be broken. She contained nothing with which she might have resisted it. For days, she knew that she should attempt to escape, to fight. But she lacked the simple volition to lift her hands to her face or push her hair out of her eyes without Santonin’s explicit instructions. Whenever he looked into her dumb gaze, he smiled as if her imposed docility pleased him. At times, he murmured names that meant nothing to her, as if he were mocking her: Windscour, Victuallin Tayne, Andelainscion. And yet he did not appear to be corrupt. Or she was not capable of perceiving his corruption.

Only once did his mastery fail. Shortly after sunrise on the first day of a desert sun, eight days after their departure from Stonemight Woodhelven, a silent shout unexpectedly thrilled the air, thrilled Linden’s heart. Santonin’s hold snapped like an over-tight harp string.

As if they had been straining at the leash for this moment, Sunder and Hollian grappled for the
rukh
. Linden clamped an arm-lock on Santonin, flung him to the ground, then broke away southeastward in the direction of the shout.

But a moment later, she found herself wandering almost aimlessly back to Santonin’s camp. Sunder and Hollian were packing the Rider’s supplies. Santonin wore a fierce grin. The triangle of his
rukh
shone like blood and emerald. Soon he took his captives on toward Revelstone, as if nothing had happened.

Nothing had happened. Linden knew nothing, understood nothing, chose nothing. The Rider could have abused her in any way he desired. She might have felt nothing if he had elected to exercise a desire. But he did not. He seemed to have a clear sense of his own purpose. Only the anticipation in his eyes showed that his purpose was not kind.

After days of emptiness, Linden would have been glad for any purpose which could restore her to herself. Any purpose at all. Thomas Covenant had ceased to exist in her thoughts. Perhaps he had ceased to exist entirely. Perhaps he had never existed. Nothing was certain except that she needed Santonin’s instructions in order to put food in her mouth.

Even the sight of Revelstone itself, the Keep of the na-Mhoram rising from the high jungle of a second fertile sun like a great stone ship, could not rouse her spirit. She was only distantly aware of what she was seeing. The gates opened to admit the Rider, closed behind his Courser, and meant nothing.

Santonin na-Mhoram-in was met by three or four other figures like himself; but they greeted him with respect, as if he had stature among them. They spoke to him, words which Linden could not understand. Then he commanded his prisoners to dismount.

Linden, Sunder, and Hollian obeyed in an immense, ill-lit hall. With Santonin striding before them, they walked the ways of the great Keep. Passages and chambers, stairs and junctions, passed unmarked, unremembered. Linden moved like a hollow vessel, unable to hold any
impression of the ancient gut-rock. Santonin’s path had no duration and no significance.

Yet his purpose remained. He brought his captives to a huge chamber like a pit in the floor of Revelstone. Its sloping sides were blurred and blunt, as if a former gallery or arena had been washed with lava. At its bottom stood a man in a deep ebony robe and a chasuble of crimson. He gripped a tall iron crozier topped with an open triangle. His hood was thrown back, exposing features which were also blurred and blunt in the torchlight.

His presence pierced Linden’s remaining scrap of identity like a hot blade. Behind her passivity, she began to wail.

He was a Raver.

“Three fools,” he said in a voice like cold scoria. “I had hoped for four.”

Santonin and the Raver spoke together in alien, empty words. Santonin produced the Stonemight and handed it to the Raver. Emerald reflected in the Raver’s eyes; an eloquent smile shaped the flesh of his lips. He closed his fist on the green chip, so that it plumed lush ferns of force. Linden’s wail died of starvation in the poverty of her being.

Then the Rider stepped to one side, and the Raver faced the captives. His visage was a smear of ill across Linden’s sight. He gazed at her directly, searched out the vestiges of her self, measured them, scorned them. “You I must not harm,” he said dully, almost regretfully. “Unharmed, you will commit all harm I could desire.” His eyes left her as if she were too paltry to merit further notice. “But these treachers are another matter.” He confronted Sunder and Hollian. “It signifies nothing if they are broken before they are shed.”

He held the Stonemight against his chest. Its steam curled up his face. Nostrils dilating, he breathed the steam as if it were a rare narcotic. “Where is Thomas Covenant?”

The Stonedownors did not react, could not react. Linden stood where she had been left, like a disregarded puppet. But her heart contracted in sudden terror.

The Raver made a slight gesture. Santonin muttered softly over his
rukh
. Abruptly the control holding Sunder and Hollian ended. They stumbled as if they had forgotten how to manage their limbs and jerked trembling erect. Fear glazed Sunder’s eyes, as if he were beholding the dreadful font and master of his existence. Hollian covered her face like a frightened child.

“Where is Thomas Covenant?”

Animated by an impulse more deeply inbred than choice or reason, the Stonedownors struggled into motion and tried to flee.

The Raver let Hollian go. But with the Stonemight he put out a hand of force which caught Sunder by the neck. Hot emerald gripped him like a garrote, snatched him to his knees.

Reft of her companion, Hollian stopped and swung around to face the Raver. Her raven hair spread about her head like wings.

The Raver knotted green ill at Sunder’s throat. “Where is Thomas Covenant?”

Sunder’s eyes were blind with fear and compulsion. They bulged in their sockets. But he did not answer. Locking his jaws, he held himself still.

The Raver’s fingers tightened. “Speak.”

The muscles of Sunder’s jaw pulled together, clenched as if he were trying to break his teeth, grind his voice into silence forever. As the force at his throat grew stronger, those muscles became
distinct, rigid, etched against the darkness of his fear and strangulation. It seemed impossible that he could so grit his teeth without tearing the ligatures of his jaw. But he did not answer. Sweat seemed to burst from his pores like bone marrow squeezed through his skin. Yet his rictus held.

A frown of displeasure incused the Raver’s forehead. “You will speak to me,” he soughed. “I will tear words from your soul, if need be.” His hand clinched the Stonemight as if he were covetous to use all its power. “Where is Thomas Covenant?”

“Dead.” Whimpers contorted Hollian’s voice. Linden felt the lie in the core of her helplessness. “Lost.”

The Raver did not glance away from Sunder, did not release his garrote. “How so?”

“In Andelain,” the eh-Brand panted. “He entered. We awaited him. He did not return.” To complete her he, she moaned, “Forgive me, Sunder.”

“And the white ring?”

“I know not. Lost. He did not return.”

Still the Raver gave no look or answer to Hollian. But he eased slightly his grasp on the Graveler. “Your refusal,” he breathed, “says to me that Thomas Covenant lives. If he is lost, why do you wish me to believe that he lives?”

Within the scraps of herself, Linden begged Sunder to support Hollian’s lie, for his own sake as well as for Covenant’s.

Slowly the Graveler unlocked his jaw. Clarity moved behind the dullness of his eyes. Terribly through his knotted throat, he grated, “I wish you to fear.”

A faint smile like a promise of murder touched the Raver’s lips. But, as with Santonin, the certainty of his purpose restrained him. To the Rider, he said, “Convey them to the hold.” Linden could not see whether he believed Hollian’s lie. She could descry nothing but the loud wrong of the Raver’s purpose.

With a few words, Santonin returned the Stonedownors to Linden’s condition. Walking like wooden articulations of his will, his captives followed him dumbly out of the stone pit.

Again, they traversed halls which had no meaning, crossed thresholds that seemed to appear only to be forgotten. Soon they entered a cavern lined into the distance on both sides with iron doors. Small barred windows in the doors exposed each cell, but Linden was incapable of looking for any glimpse of other prisoners. Santonin locked away first Sunder, then Hollian. Farther down the row of doors, he sent Linden herself into a cell.

She stood, helpless and soul-naked, beside a rank straw pallet while he studied her as if he were considering the cost of his desires. Without warning, he quenched his
rukh
. His will vanished from her mind, leaving her too empty to hold herself upright. As she crumpled to the pallet, she heard him chuckling softly. Then the door clanged shut and bolts rasped into place. She was left alone in her cell as if it contained nothing except the louse-ridden pallet and the blank stone of the walls.

She huddled foetally on the straw, while time passed over her like the indifference of Revelstone’s granite. She was a cracked gourd and could not refill herself. She was afraid to make the attempt, afraid even to think of making any attempt. Horror had burrowed into her soul. She desired nothing but silence and darkness, the peace of oblivion. But she could not achieve it. Caught in the limbo between revulsion and
death, she crouched among her emptinesses, and waited for the contradictions of her dilemma to tear her apart.

Guards came and went, bringing her unsavory food and stale water; but she could not muster enough of herself to notice them. She was deaf to the clashing of iron which marked the movements of the guards, the arrival or departure of prisoners. Iron meant nothing. There were no voices. She would have listened to voices. Her mind groped numbly for some image to preserve her sanity, some name or answer to reinvoke the identity she had lost. But she lost all names, all images. The cell held no answers.

Then there was a voice, a shout as if a prisoner had broken free. She heard it through her stupor, clung to it. Fighting the cramps of motionlessness, the rigidity of hunger and thirst, she crawled like a cripple toward the door.

Someone spoke in a flat tone. A voice unlike any she had heard before. She was so grateful for it that at first she hardly caught the words. She was clawing herself up toward the bars of her window when the words themselves penetrated her.

“Ur-Lord Thomas Covenant,” the voice was saying. “Unbeliever and white gold wielder, I salute you. You are remembered among the
Haruchai
,” The speaker was inflexible, denying his own need. “I am Brinn. Will you set us free?”

Covenant! She would have screamed the name, but her throat was too dry even to whisper.

The next instant, she heard the impact of iron on flesh. Covenant! A body slumped to the stone. Guards moved around it. Hauling herself to the window, she crushed her face against the bars and tried to see; but no one entered her range of vision. A moment later, feet made heavy by a burden moved out of the hold, leaving her lorn under a cairn of silence.