The Wounded Land (60 page)

Wind scorched his face. His clothes felt hot on his skin, as if the fabric had begun to smolder. He wore warm sweat down the length of his body. His eyes bled tears against the shine and heat of the graveling. But the Coursers ran as if they were being borne by the passion of the fire-stones. Hollian clung to Harn’s back. Sunder hunched over Clang’s neck. The
Haruchai
rode with magisterial detachment. And the Coursers ran.

The graveling unfurled as if it would never end. Fire deepened the sky, colored the heavens with molten grandeur. Through the haze, the sun’s coronal looked like an outer ring of incandescence. The entire savannah was a bed of coals; the Coursers were traversing an accentuated hell. But Sunder had mastered the
rukh
. While he lived, the beasts could not falter.

They did not. They ran as if they had been born in flames. Smoothly, indefatigably, they swept the leagues behind them like dead leaves into a furnace.

Covenant’s breathing sobbed, not because he lacked air, but rather because his lungs were being seared. He began to have visions of Glimmermere, the cool tarn tinged with Earthpower. His bones throbbed to inhale water. And the Coursers ran.

When they broke out of the graveling onto hard dirt, the suddenness of the change made the desert air feel like bliss. It snatched his head up. Relief slammed into his chest like a polar wind. In an instant, the Coursers were clattering across dead, sunbaked soil, raising pennons of dust. The haze retreated; abruptly the terrain had features, texture, meaning.

As his sight cleared, he saw Vain ahead of him.

The Demondim-spawn stood, black and fatal, on the bank of a gully which twisted emptily across the company’s way. The dull iron bands of the Staff of Law emphasized his midnight form. He watched the Coursers thunder toward him as if he had been waiting for them.

He was alone.

Alone?

Covenant tumbled from Clash’s back as the beast pounded to a halt. He landed hard, sprawled across the dirt. Rolling his feet under him, he hurled himself at Vain.

“What have you done with her?”

Vain did not move: Covenant crashed into the Demondim-spawn, recoiled as if he had hit a wall of obsidian.

The next moment, Hergrom appeared out of the gully. He seemed uninjured, though his raiment had been singed by the graveling. Without expression, as if he did not deign to judge Covenant’s precipitation, he said, “She is here. In the shade.”

Covenant surged past him, jumped down into the gully.

The dry watercourse was not deep. He landed in sand and whirled, searching for Linden.

She lay on her back under the shadow of the gully wall. Her skin seemed faintly red in the dimmer light; she had been so close to the graveling. He could see her as clearly as if she were engraved on Ms mind: her raw color, the streaks of sweat in her wheaten hair, the frown scar between her brows like an expostulation against the life she had lived.

She was in convulsions. Her heels drummed the sand; her fingers attacked the ground on either side; spasms racked her body, arched her back. A skull-grin clinched her face. Small gasps whimpered through her teeth like shreds of pain.

Covenant dove to her side, gripped her shoulders to restrain her arms. He could not make a sound, could not thrust words past his panic.

Sunder and Hollian joined him, followed by Harn and Hergrom. Brinn, Ceer, and Stell came a moment later, bearing Cail. He, too, was in the throes of another seizure.

Sunder rested a hand on Covenant’s shoulder. “It is the Sunbane sickness,” he said softly. “I am sorry. She cannot endure.”

Her whimpering turned to a rasp in her throat like a death-rattle. She seemed to be groaning, “Covenant.”

Linden! he moaned. I can’t help you!

Abruptly her eyes snapped open, staring wildly. They gaped over the rictus which bared her teeth.

“Cove—” Her throat worked as the muscles knotted, released. Her jaws were locked together like the grip of a vise. Her eyes glared white delirium at him. “Help—”

Her efforts to speak burned his heart. “I don’t—” He was choking. “Don’t know how.”

Her lips stretched as if she wanted to sink her teeth into the skin of his cheek. Her neck cords stood out like bone. She had to force the word past her seizure by sheer savagery.

“
Voure
.”

“What?” He clung to her. “
Voure
?”

“Give—” Her extremity cut him like a sword. “
Voure
.”

The sap that warded off insects? His orbs were as dry as fever. “You’re delirious.”

“
No
.” The intensity of her groan pierced the air. “Mind—” Her wild, white stare demanded, beseeched. With every scrap of her determination, she fought her throat. “Clear.” The strain aggravated her convulsions. Her body kicked against his weight as if she were being buried alive. “I—” For an instant, she dissolved into whimpers. But she rallied, squeezed out, “Feel.”

Feel? he panted. Feel what?

“
Voure
.”

For one more horrific moment, he hung on the verge of understanding her. Then he had it.

Feel
!

“Brinn!” he barked over his shoulder. “Get the
voure
!”

Feel! Linden could feel. She had the Land-born health sense; she could perceive the nature of her illness, understand it precisely. And the
voure
as well. She knew what she needed.

The angle of her stare warned him. With a jolt, he realized that no one had moved, that Brinn was not obeying him.

“Covenant,” Sunder murmured painfully. “Ur-Lord. She— I beg you to hear me. She has the Sunbane sickness. She knows not what she says. She—”

“Brinn.” Covenant spoke softly, but his lucid passion sliced through Sunder’s dissuasion. “Her mind is clear. She knows exactly what she’s saying. Get the
voure
.”

Still the
Haruchai
did not comply. “Ur-Lord,” he said, “the Graveler has knowledge of this sickness.”

Covenant had to release Linden’s arms, clench his fists against his forehead to keep from screaming. “The only reason”—his voice juddered like a cable in a high wind—“Kevin Landwaster was able to perform the Ritual of Desecration, destroy all the rife of the Land for hundreds of years, was because the Bloodguard stood by and let him do it. He ordered them not to do anything, and he had knowledge, so they obeyed. For the rest of their lives, their Vow was corrupt, and they didn’t know it. They didn’t even know they were tainted until Lord Foul rubbed their noses in it. Until he proved he could make them serve him.” Foul had maimed three of them to make them resemble Covenant. “Are you going to just stand there again and let more people die?” Abruptly his control shattered. He hammered the sand with his fists. “
Get the VOURE
!”

Brinn glanced at Sunder, at Cail. For a moment, he seemed to hesitate. Then he sprang from the gully toward the Coursers.

He was back almost at once, carrying Memla’s leather flask of
voure
. With an air of disinterest, as if he eschewed responsibility, he handed it to Covenant.

Trembling Covenant unstopped the flask. He had to apply a crushing force of will to steady his hands so that he could pour just a few drops through Linden’s teeth. Then he watched in a trance of dread and hope as she fought to swallow.

Her back arched, went slack as if she had broken her spine.

His gaze darkened. The world spun in his head. His mind became the swooping and plunge of condors. He could not see, could not think, until he heard her whisper, “Now Cail.”

The
Haruchai
responded immediately. Her understanding of Cail’s plight demonstrated her clarity of mind. Brinn took the flask, hurried to Cail’s side. With Stell’s help, he forced some of the
voure
between Cail’s locked jaws.

Relaxation spread through Linden, muscle by muscle. Her breathing eased; the cords of her neck loosened. One by one, her fingers uncurled. Covenant lifted her hand, folded her broken nails in his clasp, as he watched the rigor slipping out of her. Her legs became limp along the sand. He held to her hand because he could not tell whether she were recovering or dying.

Then he knew. When Brinn came over to him and announced without inflection, “The
voure
is efficacious. He will mend,” he gave a low sigh of relief.

Covenant watched her while she slept, human and frail, until sometime after sunset. Then, in the light of a campfire built by the
Haruchai
, he roused her. She was too weak for solid food, so he fed her
metheglin
diluted with water.

She was recovering. Even his blunt sight could not be mistaken about it. When she went back to sleep, he stretched out on the sand near her, and fell almost instantly into dreams.

They were dreams in which wild magic raged, savage and irremediably destructive. Nothing could be stopped, and every flare of power was the Despiser’s glee. Covenant himself became a waster of the world, became Kevin on a scale surpassing all conceivable Desecrations. The white fire came from the passions which made him who he was, and he could not—!

But the stirring of the company awakened him well before dawn. Sweating in the desert chill, he climbed to his feet and looked around. The embers of the fire revealed that Linden was sitting up, with her back against the gully wall. Hergrom attended her soundlessly, giving her food.

She met Covenant’s gaze. He could not read her expression in the dim light, did not know where he stood with her. His sight seemed occluded by the afterimages of nightmare. But the obscurity and importance of her face drew him to her. He squatted before her, studied her mien. After a moment, he murmured to explain himself, “I thought you were finished.”

“I thought,” she replied in a restrained voice, “I was never going to make you understand.”

“I know.” What else could he say? But the inadequacy of his responses shamed him. He felt so unable to reach her.

But while he fretted against his limitations, her hand came to him, touched the tangle of his beard. Her tone thickened. “It makes you look older.”

One of the
Haruchai
began to rebuild the fire. A red gleam reflected from her wet eyes as if they were aggravated by coals, were bits of fire in her mind. She went on speaking, fighting the emotion in her throat.

“You wanted me to look at Vain.” She nodded toward the Demondim-spawn; he stood across the gully from her. “I’ve tried. But I don’t understand. He isn’t alive. He’s got so much power, and it’s imperative. But it’s—it’s inanimate. Like your ring. He could be anything.”

Her hand covered her eyes. For a moment, she could not steady herself. “Covenant, it hurts. It hurts to see him. It hurts to see anything.” Reflections formed orange-red beads below the shadow of her hand.

He wanted to put his arms around her; but he knew that was not the comfort she needed. A Raver had touched her, had impaled her soul. Gibbon had told her that her health sense would destroy her. Gruffly he answered, “It saved your life.”

Her shoulders clenched.

“It saved Cail’s life.”

She shuddered, dropped her hand, let him see her eyes streaming in the new light of the fire. “It saved your life.”

He gazed at her as squarely as he could, but said nothing, gave her all the time she required.

“After Crystal Stonedown.” The words came huskily past her lips. “You were dying. I didn’t know what to do.” A grimace embittered her mouth. “Even if I’d had my bag— Take away hospitals, labs, equipment, and doctors aren’t much good.” But a moment later she swallowed her insufficiency. “I didn’t know what else to do. So I went inside you. I felt your heart and your blood and your lungs and your nerves— Your sickness. I kept you alive. Until Hollian was able to help you.”

Her eyes left his, wandered the gully like guilt. “It was horrible. To feel all that ill.
Taste
it. As if I were the one who was sick. It was like breathing gangrene.” Her forehead knotted in revulsion or grief; but she forced her gaze back to his visage. “I swore I would never do anything like that again as long as I lived.”

Paul made him bow his head. He glared into the shadows between them. A long moment passed before he could say without anger, “My leprosy is that disgusting to you.”

“No.” Her denial jerked his eyes up again. “It wasn’t leprosy. It was venom.”

Before he could absorb her asseveration, she continued, “It’s still in you. It’s growing. That’s why it’s so hard to look at you.” Fighting not to weep, she said hoarsely, “I can’t keep it out. Any of it. The Sunbane gets inside me. I can’t keep it out. You talk about desecration. Everything desecrates me.”

What can I do? he groaned. Why did you follow me? Why did you try to save my life? Why doesn’t my leprosy disgust you? But aloud he tried to give her answers, rather than questions. “That’s how Foul works. He tries to turn hope into despair. Strength into weakness. He attacks things that are precious, and tries to make them evil.” The Despiser had used Kevin’s love of the Land, used the Bloodguard’s service, the Giants’ fidelity, used Elena’s passion, to corrupt them all. And Linden had looked at Vain because he, Covenant, had asked it of her. “But that knife cuts both ways. Every time he tries to hurt us is an opportunity to fight him. We have to find the strength of our weakness. Make hope out of despair.

“Linden.” He reached out with his half-hand, took one of her hands, gripped it. “It doesn’t do any good to try to hide from him.
It boots nothing to avoid his snares
. “If you close your eyes, you’ll just get weaker. We have to accept who we are. And deny him.” But his fingers were numb; he could not tell whether or not she answered his clasp.

Her head had fallen forward. Her hair hid her face.

“Linden, it saved your
life
.”

“No.” Her voice seemed to be muffled by the predawn dusk and the shadows. “You saved my life. I don’t have any power. All I can do is see.” She pulled her hand away. “Leave me alone,” she breathed. “It’s too much. I’ll try.”

He wanted to protest. But her appeal moved him. Aching stiffly in all his joints, he stood up and went to the fire for warmth.