The Wounded Land

Four: “You Are Mine”

RED agony spiked the centre of Thomas Covenant's chest. He felt that he was screaming. But the fire was too bright; he could not hear himself. From the wound, flame writhed through him, mapping his nerves like a territory of pain. He could not fight it,

He did not want to fight it. He had saved Joan. Saved Joan. That thought iterated through him, consoling him for the unanswerable violence of the wound. For the first time in eleven years, he was at peace with his ex-wife. He had repaid the old debt between them to the limit of his mortality; he had given everything he possessed to make restitution for the blameless crime of his leprosy. Nothing more could be asked of him.

But the fire had a voice. At first, it was too loud to be understood. It retorted in his ears like the crushing of boulders. He inhaled it with every failing breath; it echoed along the conflagration in his chest. But gradually it became clear. It uttered words as heavy as stones.

“Your will is mine-

You have no hope of life without me,

Have no hope of life without me.

All is mine.

“Your heart is mine-

There is no love or peace within you,

Is no peace or love within you.

All is mine.

“Your soul is mine-

You cannot dream of your salvation,

Cannot plead for your salvation.

You are mine.”

The arrogance of the words filled him with repudiation. He knew that voice. He had spent ten years strengthening himself against it, tightening his grip on the truth of love and rage which had enabled him to master it. And still it had the power to appal him. It thronged with relish for the misery of lepers. It claimed him and would not let him go.

Now he wanted to fight. He wanted to live. He could not bear to let that voice have its way with him.

But the knife had struck too deeply; the wound was complete. A numbness crept through him, and the red fire faded toward mist. He had no pulse, could not remember breathing. Could not-

Out of the mist, he remembered Linden Avery,

Hellfire!

She had followed him, even though he had warned her-warned her in spite of the fact that she had obviously been chosen to fulfil some essential role. He had been so torn-She had given an excruciating twist to his dilemma, had dismayed and infuriated him with her determination to meddle in matters she could not comprehend. And yet she was the first woman he had met in ten years who was not afraid of him.

And she had fallen beside him, trying to save his life. The man had struck her; the fire had covered her as it reached for him. If she were being taken to the Land-!

Of course she was. Why else had the old man accosted her?

But she had neither knowledge nor power with which to defend herself, had no way to understand what was happening to her.

Blindly, Covenant struggled against the numbness, resisted the voice. Linden had tried to save his life. He could not leave her to face such a doom alone. Wrath at the brutality of her plight crowded his heart. By hell! he raged. You can't do this!

Suddenly, a resurgence of fire burned out of him-pure white flame, the fire of his need. It concentrated in the knife wound, screamed through his chest like an apotheosis or cautery. Heat hammered at his heart, his lungs, his half-hand. His body arched in ire and pain.

The next instant, the crisis broke. Palpable relief poured through him. The pain receded, leaving him limp and gasping on the stone. The mist swirled with malice, but did not touch him.

“Ah, you are stubborn yet,” the voice sneered, so personal in its contempt that it might have come from within his mind rather than from the attar-laden air. “Stubborn beyond my fondest desires. In one stroke you have ensured your own defeat. My will commands now, and you are lost. Groveler!”

Covenant flinched at the virulence of the sound.

Lord Foul.

“Do you mislike the title I have given you?” The Despiser spoke softly, hardly above a whisper; but his quietness only emphasized his sharp hate. “You will merit it absolutely. Never have you been more truly mine. You believe that you have been near unto death. That is false, groveler! I would not permit you to die. I will obtain far better service from your life.”

Covenant wanted to strike out at the mist, flail it away from him. But he was too weak. He lay on the stone as if his limbs had been bled dry. He needed all his will to dredge his voice back to Me. “I don't believe it,” he panted hoarsely. “You can't be stupid enough to try this again.”

“Ah, you do not believe,” jeered Lord Foul. “Misdoubt it, then. Disbelieve, and I will rend your very soul from your bones!”

No! Covenant rasped in silence. I've had ten years to understand what happened the last time. You can't do that to me again.

“You will grovel before me,” the Despiser went on, “and call it joy. Your victory over me was nothing. It serves me well. Plans which I planted in my anguish have come to fruit. Time is altered. The world is not what it was. You are changed, Unbeliever.” The mist made that word, Unbeliever, into a name of sovereign scorn. “You are no longer free. You have sold yourself for that paltry woman who loathes you. When you accepted her life from me, you became my tool. A tool does not choose. Did not my Enemy expound to you the necessity of freedom? Your very presence here empowers me to master you.”

Covenant flinched. Lord Foul spoke the truth; he was not free. In trading himself for Joan, he had committed himself to something he could neither measure nor recall. He wanted to cry out; but he was too angry to show that much weakness.

“We are foemen, you and I,” continued Lord Foul, “enemies to the end. But the end will be yours, Unbeliever, not mine. That you will learn to believe. For a score of centuries I lay entombed in the Land which I abhor, capable of naught but revulsion. But in time I was restored to myself. For nearly as many centuries more, I have been preparing retribution. When last comes to last, you will be the instrument of my victory.”

Bloody hell! Covenant gagged on the thickness of the mist and Lord Foul's vitriol. But his passion was clear. I won't let you do this!

“Now hear me, groveler. Hear my prophecy. It is for your ears alone-for behold! there are none left in the Land to whom you could deliver it.”

That hurt him. None? What had happened to the Lords?

But the Despiser went on remorselessly, mocking Covenant by his very softness. "No, to you alone I say it: tremble in your heart, for the ill that you deem most terrible is upon you! Your former victory accomplished naught but to prepare the way for this moment. I am Lord Foul the Despiser, and I speak the one word of truth. To you I say it: the wild magic is no longer potent against me! It cannot serve you now. No power will suffice.

“Unbeliever, you cannot oppose me. At the last there will be but one choice for you, and you will make it in all despair. Of your own volition you will give the white gold into my hand.”

No! Covenant shouted. No! But he could not penetrate Lord Foul's certitude.

"Knowing that I will make use of that power to destroy the Earth, you will place it into my hand, and no hope or chance under all the Arch of Time can prevent you!

“Yes, tremble, groveler! There is despair laid up for you here beyond anything your petty mortal heart can bear!”

The passionate whisper threatened to crush Covenant against the stone. He wailed refusals and curses, but they had no force, could not drive the attar from his throat.

Then Lord Foul began to chuckle. The corruption of death clogged the air. For a long moment, Covenant retched as if the muscles of his chest were breaking.

But as he gagged, the jeering drifted away from him. Wind sifted through it, pulling the mist apart. The wind was cold, as if a chill of laughter rode it, echoing soundlessly; but the atmosphere grew bright as the mist frayed and vanished.

Covenant lay on his back under a brilliant azure sky and a strange sun.

The sun was well up in the heavens. The central glare of its light was familiar, comforting. But it wore a blue corona like a ring of sapphire; and its radiance deepened the rest of the sky to the texture of sendaline,

He squinted at it dumbly, too stunned to move or react. Of your own volition- The sun's aurora disturbed him in a way he could not define. Plans which I planted in my anguish- Shifting as it had a mind of its own, his right hand slowly probed toward the spot where the knife had struck him.

His fingers were too numb to tell him anything. But he could feel their pressure on his chest. He could feel their touch when they slipped through the slit in the centre of his T-shirt.

There was no pain.

He withdrew his hand, took his gaze out of the sky to look at his fingers.

There was no blood.

He sat up with a jerk that made his head reel. For a moment, he had to prop himself up with his arms. Blinking against the sun-dazzle, he forced his eyes into focus on his chest.

His shirt had been cut-a slash the width of his hand just below his sternum. Under it lay the white line of a new scar.

He gaped at it. How-?

You are stubborn yet. Had he healed himself? With wild magic?

He did not know. He had not been conscious of wielding any power. Could he have done such a thing unconsciously? High Lord Mhoram had once said to him, You are the white gold. Did that mean he was capable of using power without knowing it? Without being in control of it? Hellfire!

Long moments passed before he realized that he was facing a parapet. He was sitting on one side of a round stone slab encircled by a low wall, chest-high on him in this position.

A jolt of recognition brought him out of his stupour. He knew this place.

Kevin's Watch.

For an instant, he asked himself, Why here? But then a chain of

connections jumped taut in him, and he whirled, to find Linden stretched unconscious behind him.

He almost panicked. She lay completely still. Her eyes were open, but she saw nothing. The muscles of her limbs hung slack against the bones. Her hair was tangled across her face.

Blood seeped in slow drops from behind her left ear.

You are mine.

Suddenly, Covenant was sweating in the cool air.

He gripped her shoulders, shook her, then snatched up her left hand, started to slap her wrist. Her head rolled in protest. A whimper tightened her lips. She began to writhe. He dropped her arm, clamped his hands to the sides of her face to keep her from hurting herself against the stone.

Abruptly, her gaze sprang outward. She drew a harsh gasp of air and screamed. Her cry sounded like destitution under the immense sky and the strange blue-ringed sun.

“Linden!” he shouted. She sucked air to howl again. “Linden!”

Her eyes lurched into focus on him, flared in horror or rage as if he had threatened her with leprosy.

Fiercely, she struck him across the cheek.

He recoiled, more in surprise than in pain.

“You bastard,” she panted, surging to her knees. “Haven't you even got the guts to go on living?” She inhaled deeply to yell at him. But before she could release her ire, dismay knotted her features. Her hands leaped to her mouth, then covered her face. She gave a muffled groan. “Oh my God.”

He stared at her in confusion. What had happened to her? He wanted to challenge her at once, demand an answer. But the situation was too complex. And she was totally unprepared for it. He remembered vividly his first appearance here. If Lena had not extended her hand to him, he would have died in vertigo and madness. It was too much for any mind to accept. If only she had listened to him, stayed out of danger-

But she had not listened. She was here, and in need. She did not yet know the extent of her need. For her sake, he forced a semblance of gentleness into his voice. “You wanted to understand, and I kept telling you you weren't equipped. Now I think you're going to understand whether you want to or not.”

“Covenant,” she moaned through her hands. “Covenant.”

“Linden.” Carefully, he touched her wrists, urged her to lower her arms.

“Covenant-” She bared her face to him. Her eyes were brown, deep and moist, and dark with the repercussions of fear. They shied from his, then returned. “I must have been dreaming.” Her voice quavered, “I thought you were my father.”

He smiled for her, though the strain made his battered bones ache. Father? He wanted to pursue that, but did not. Other questions were more immediate.

But before he could frame an inquiry, she began to recollect herself. She ran her hands through her hair, winced when she touched the injury behind her ear. For a moment, she looked at the trace of blood on her fingers. Then other memories returned. She gasped sharply. Her eyes jerked to his chest. “The knife-” Her urgency was almost an attack. “I saw-” She grabbed for him, yanked up his shirt, gaped at the new scar under his sternum. It appalled her. Her hands reached toward it, flinched away. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “That's not possible.”

“Listen.” He raised her head with his left hand, made her meet his gaze. He wanted to distract her, prepare her. “What happened to you? That man hit you. The fire was all over us. What happened after that?”

“What happened to you?”

“One thing at a time.” The exertion of keeping himself steady made him sound grim. “There are too many other things you have to understand first. Please give me a chance. Tell me what happened.”

She pulled away. Her whole body rejected his question. One trembling finger pointed at his chest. “That's impossible.”

Impossible. At that moment, he could have overwhelmed her with impossibilities. But he refrained, permitted himself to say only, “So is possession.”

She met his gaze miserably. Then her eyes closed. In a low voice, she said, “I must have been unconscious. I was dreaming about my parents.”

“You didn't hear anything? A voice making threats?” '

Her eyes snapped open in surprise. “No. Why would I?”

He bowed his head to hide his turmoil. Foul hadn't spoken to her? The implications both relieved and frightened him. Was she somehow independent of him? Free of his control? Or was he already that sure of her?

When Covenant looked up again, Linden's attention had slipped away to the parapet, the sun, the wide sky. Slowly, her face froze. She started to her feet. “Where are we?”

He caught her arms, held her sitting in front of him. “Look at me.” Her head winced from side to side in frantic denial. Exigencies thronged about him; questions were everywhere. But at this moment the stark need in her face dominated all other issues. “Dr. Avery.” There was insanity in the air; he knew that from experience. If he did not help her now, she might never be within reach of help again. “Look at me.”

His demand brought her wild stare back to him.

“I can explain it. Just give me a chance.”

Her voice knifed at him. “Explain it.”

He flinched in shame; it was his fault that she was here-and that she was so unready. But he forced himself to face her squarely. “I couldn't tell you about it before.” The difficulty of what he had to say roughened his tone. “There was no way you could have believed it. And now it's so complicated-”

Her eyes clung to him like claws.

“There are two completely different explanations,” he said as evenly as he could. “Outside and inside. The outside explanation might be easier to accept. It goes like this.” He took a deep breath. “You and I are still lying in that triangle.” A grimace strained his bruises. “We're unconscious. And while we're unconscious, we're dreaming. We're sharing a dream.”

Her mien was tight with disbelief. He hastened to add, "It's not as farfetched as you think. Deep down in their minds-down where dreams come from-most people have a lot in common. That's why so many of our dreams fall into patterns that other people can recognize.

“It's happening to us.” He kept pouring words at her, not because he wanted to convince her, but because he knew she needed time, needed any answer, however improbable, to help her survive the first shock of her situation. “We're sharing a dream. And we're not the only ones,” he went on, denying her a chance to put her incredulity into words. “Joan had fragments of the same dream. And that old man-the one you saved. We're all tied into the same unconscious process.”

Her gaze wavered. He snapped, "Keep looking at me! I have to tell you what kind of dream it is. It's dangerous. It can hurt you. The things buried in us are powerful and violent, and they are going to come out. The darkness in us-the destructive side, the side we keep locked up all our lives-is alive here. Everybody has some self-hate inside. Here it's personified-externalized, the way things happen in dreams. He calls himself Lord Foul the Despiser, and he wants to destroy us.

“That's what Joan kept talking about. Lord Foul. And that's what the old man meant. 'However he may assail you. Be true.' Be true to yourself, don't serve the Despiser, don't let him destroy you. That's what we have to do.” He pleaded with her to accept the consequences of what he was saying, even if she chose not to believe the explanation itself. “We have to stay sane, hang onto ourselves, defend what we are and what we believe and what we want. Until it's over. Until we regain consciousness.”

He stopped, forced himself to give her time.

Her eyes dropped to his chest, as if that scar were a test of what he said. Shadows of fear passed across her countenance. Covenant felt suddenly sure that she was familiar with self-hate.

Tightly, she said, “This has happened to you before.”

He nodded.

She did not raise her head. “And you believe it?”

He wanted to say, Partially. If you put the two explanations together, they come close to what I believe. But in her present straits he could not trouble her with disclaimers. Instead, he got to his feet, drew her with him to look out from the Watch.

She stiffened against him in shock.

They were on a slab like a platform that appeared to hang suspended in the air. An expanse of sky as huge as if they were perched on a mountaintop covered them. The weird halo of the sun gave a disturbing hue to the roiling grey sea of clouds two hundred feet below them. The clouds thrashed like thunderheads, concealing the earth from horizon to horizon.

A spasm of vertigo wrenched Covenant; he remembered acutely that he was four thousand feet above the foothills. But he ignored the imminent reel and panic around him and concentrated on Linden.

She was stunned, rigid. This leap without transition from night' in the woods to morning on such an eminence staggered her. He wanted to put his arms around her, hide her face against his chest to protect her; but he knew he could not do so, could not give her the strength to bear things which once had almost shattered him. She had to achieve her own survival. Grimly, he turned her to look in the opposite direction.

The mountains rising dramatically there seemed to strike her a blow. They sprang upward out of the clouds a stone's throw from the Watch. Their peaks were rugged and dour. From the cliff behind the Watch, they withdrew on both sides like a wedge, piling higher into the distance. But off to the right a spur of the range marched back across the clouds before falling away again.

Linden gaped at the cliff as if it were about to fall on her. Covenant could feel her ribs straining; she was caught in the predicament of the mad and could not find enough air in all the open sky to enable her to cry out. Fearing that she might break away from him, lose herself over the parapet, he tugged her back down to the safety of the floor. She crumpled to her knees, gagging silently., Her eyes had a terrible glazed and empty look.

“Linden!” Because he did not know what else to do, he barked, “Haven't you even got the guts to go on living?”

She gasped, inhaled. Her eyes swept into focus on him like swords leaping from their scabbards. The odd sunlight gave her face an aspect of dark fury.

“I'm sorry,” he said thickly. Her reaction made him ache as badly as helplessness. “You were so-” Unwittingly, he had trespassed on something which he had no right to touch. “I never wanted this to happen to you.”

She rejected his regret with a violent shake of her head. “Now,” “ she panted, ”you're going to tell me the other explanation."

He nodded. Slowly, he released her, withdrew to sit with his back against the parapet. He did not understand her strange combination of strength and weakness; but at the moment his incomprehension was unimportant. “The inside explanation.”

A deep weariness ran through him. He fought it for the words he needed. “We're in a place called the Land. It's a different world-like being on a completely different planet. These mountains are the Southron Range, the southern edge. All the rest of the Land is west and north and east from us. This place is Kevin's Watch. Below us, and a bit to the west, there used to be a village called Mithil Stonedown. Revelstone is- ”But the thought of Revelstone recalled the Lords; he shied away from it. "I've been here before.

“Most of what I can tell you about it won't make much sense until you see it for yourself. But there's one thing that's important right now. The Land has an enemy. Lord Foul.” He studied her, trying to read her response. But her eyes brandished darkness at him, nothing else. “For thousands of years,” he went on, “Foul has been trying to destroy the Land. It's-sort of a prison for him. He wants to break out.” He groaned inwardly at the impossibility of making what he had to say acceptable to someone who had never had the experience. "He translated us out of our world. Brought us here. He wants us to serve him. He thinks he can manipulate us into helping him destroy the Land.

“We have power here.” He prayed he was speaking the truth. “Since we come from outside, we aren't bound by the Law, the natural order that holds everything together. That's why Foul wants us, wants to use us. We can do things nobody else here can.”

To spare himself the burden of her incredulity, he leaned his head against the parapet and gazed up at the mountains. “The necessity of freedom,” he breathed. “As long as we aren't bound by any Law, or anybody-or any explanation,” he said to ease his conscience, “we're powerful.” But I'm not free. I've already chosen. "That's what it comes down to. Power. The power that healed me.

"That old man-Somehow, he knows what's going on in the Land. And he's no friend of Foul's. He chose you for something-I don't know what. Or maybe he wanted to reassure himself. Find out if you're the kind of person Foul can manipulate.

“As for Joan, she was Foul's way of getting at me. She was vulnerable to him. After what happened the last time I was here, I wasn't. He used her to get me to step into that triangle by my own choice. So he could summon me here.” What I don't understand, he sighed, is why he had to do it that way. It wasn't like that before. “Maybe it's an accident that you're here, too. But I don't think so.”

Linden glanced down at the stone as if to verify that it was substantial, then touched the bruise behind her ear. Frowning, she shifted into a sitting position. Now she did not look at him. “I don't understand,” she said stiffly. "First you tell me this is a dream-then you say it's real. First you're dying back there in the woods-then you're healed by some kind of-some kind of magic. First Lord Foul is a figment-then he's real.“ In spite of her control, her voice trembled slightly. ”Which is it? You can't have it both ways.“ Her fist clenched. ”You could be dying."

Ah, I have to have it both ways, Covenant murmured. It's like vertigo. The answer is in the contradiction-in the eye of the paradox. But he did not utter his thought aloud.

Yet Linden's question relieved him. Already, her restless mind-that need which had rejected his efforts to warn her, had driven her to follow him to his doom-was beginning to grapple with her situation. If she had the strength to challenge him, then her crisis was past, at least for the moment. He found himself smiling in spite of his fear.

“It doesn't matter,” he replied. “Maybe this is real-maybe it isn't. You can believe whatever you want. I'm just offering you a frame of reference, so you'll have some place to start.”

Her hands kept moving, touching herself, the stone, as if she needed tactile sensation to assure her of her own existence. After a moment, she said, “You've been here before.” Her anger had turned to pain. “It's your life. Tell me how to understand.”

“Face it,” he said without hesitation. “Go forward. Find out what happens-what's at stake. What matters to you.” He knew from experience that there was no other defence against insanity; the Land's reality and its unreality could not be reconciled. “Give yourself a chance to find out who you are.”

“I know who I am.” Her jaw was stubborn. The lines of her nose seemed precise rather than fragile; her mouth was severe by habit. “I'm a doctor.” But she was facing something she did not know how to grasp. “I don't even have my bag.” She scrutinized her hands as if she wondered what they were good for. When she met his gaze, her question was a demand as well as an appeal. “What do you believe?”

“I believe”- he made no effort to muffle his hardness — “that we've got to find some way to stop Foul. That's more important than anything. He's trying to destroy the Land. I'm not going to let him get away with that. That's who I am.”

She stared at his affirmation. “Why? What does it have to do with you? If this is a dream, it doesn't matter. And if it's-” She had difficulty saying the words. “If it's real, it's not your problem. You can ignore it”

Covenant tasted old rage. “Foul laughs at lepers.”

At that, a glare of comprehension touched her eyes. Her scowl said plainly, Nobody has the right to laugh at illness.

In a tight voice, she asked, “What do we do now?”

“Now?” He was weak with fatigue; but her question galvanized him. She had reasons, strengths, possibilities. The old man had not risked her gratuitously. “Now,” he said grimly, "if I can hold off my vertigo, we get down from here, and go find out what kind of trouble we're in."

“Down?” She blinked at him. “I don't know how we got up.”

To answer her, he nodded toward the mountains. When she turned, she noticed the gap in the curve of the parapet facing the cliff. He watched as she crawled to the gap, saw what he already knew was there.

The parapet circled the tip of a long spire of stone which angled toward the cliff under the Watch. There were rude stairs cut into the upper surface of the shaft.

He joined her. One glance told him that his dizziness would not be easily overcome. Two hundred feet below him, the stairs vanished in the clouds like a fall into darkness.

Five: Thunder and Lightning

“I'LL go first.” Covenant was trembling deep in his bones. He did not look at Linden. “This stair joins the cliff-but if we fall, it's four thousand feet down. Fm no good at heights. If I slip, I don't want to take you with me.” Deliberately, he set himself at the gap, feet first so that he could back through it.

There he paused, tried to resist the vertigo which unmoored his mind by giving himself a VSE. But the exercise aroused a pang of leper's anxiety. Under the blue-tinged sun, his skin had a dim purple cast, as if his leprosy had already spread up his arms, affecting the pigmentation, killing the nerves.

A sudden weakness yearned in his muscles, making his shoulders quiver. The particular numbness of his dead nerves had not altered, for better or worse. But the diseased hue of his flesh looked fatal and prophetic; it struck him like a leap of intuition. One of his questions answered itself. Why was Linden here? Why had the old man spoken to her rather than to him? Because she was necessary. To save the Land when he failed.

The wild magic is no longer potent. So much for power. He had already abandoned himself to Lord Foul's machinations. A groan escaped him before he could lock his teeth on it.

“Covenant?” Concern sharpened Linden's voice. “Are you all right?”

He could not reply. The simple fact that she was worried about him, was capable of worrying about him when she was under so much stress, multiplied the dismay in his bones. His eyes clung to the stone, searching for strength.

“Covenant!” Her demand was like a slap in the face. “I don't know how to help you. Tell me what to do.”

What to do. None of this was her fault. She deserved an answer. He pulled himself down into the centre of his fatigue and dizziness. Had he really doomed himself by taking Joan's place? Surely he did not have to fail? Surely the power for which he had paid such a price was not so easily discounted? Without raising his head, he gritted, “At the bottom of the stairs, to my left, there's a ledge in the cliff. Be careful.”

Coercing himself into motion, he backed through the gap.

As his head passed below the level of the Watch, he heard her whisper fiercely, “Damn you, why do you have to act so impervious? All I want to do is help.” She sounded as if her sanity depended on her ability to be of help.

But he could not afford to think about her; the peril of the stairs consumed his attention. He worked his way down them as if they were a ladder, clutching them with his hands, kicking each foot into them to be sure it was secure before he trusted it. His gaze never left his hands. They strained on the steps until the sinews stood out like desperation.

The void around him seemed fathomless. He could hear the emptiness of the wind. And the swift seething of the clouds below him had a hypnotic power, sucking at his concentration. Long plunges yawned all around him. But he knew this fear. Holding his breath, he lowered himself into the clouds-into the still centre of his vertigo.

Abruptly, the sun faded and went out. Grey gloom thickened toward midnight at every step of the descent.

A pale flash ran through the dank sea, followed almost at once by thunder. The wind mounted, rushed wetly at him as if it sought to lift him off the spire. The stone became slick. His numb fingers could not tell the difference, but the nerves in his wrists and elbows registered every slippage of his grasp.

Again, a bolt of lightning thrashed past him, illuminating the mad boil and speed of the clouds. The sky shattered. Instinctively, he flattened himself against the stone. Something in him howled, but he could not tell whether it howled aloud.

Crawling painfully through the brutal impact of the storm, he went on downward.

He marked his progress in the intensifying weight of the rain. The fine cold sting of spray against his sore face became a pelting of heavy drops like a shower of pebbles. Soon he was drenched and battered. Lightning and thunder shouted across him, articulating savagery. But the promise of the ledge drew him on.

At last, his feet found it. Thrusting away from the spire, he pressed his back to the wall of the cliff, gaping upward.

A flail of blue-white fire rendered Linden out of the darkness. She was just above the level of his head.

When she reached the ledge, he caught her so that she would not stumble over the precipice. She gripped him urgently. “Covenant!” The wind ripped her shout away; he could barely hear her. “Are you all right?”

He put his mouth to her ear. “Stay against the cliff! We've got to find shelter!”

She nodded sharply.

Clenching her right hand in his left, he turned his back on the fall and began to shuttle west along the ledge.

Lightning burned overhead, to give him a glimpse of his situation. The ledge was two or three feet wide and ran roughly level across the cliff face. From its edge, the mountain disappeared into the abyss of the clouds.

Thunder hammered at him like the voice of his vertigo, commanding him to lose his balance. Wind and rain as shrill as chaos lashed his back. But Linden's hand anchored him. He squeezed himself like yearning against the cliff and crept slowly forward.

At every lightning blast, he peered ahead through the rain, trying to see the end of the ledge.

There: a vertical line like a scar in the cliff face.

He reached it, pulled Linden past the corner, up a slope of mud and scree which gushed water as if it were a stream bed. At once, the wind became a constricted yowl. The next blue glare revealed that they had entered a narrow ravine sluicing upward through the mountainside. Water frothed like rapids past the boulders which cramped the floor of the ravine.

He struggled ahead until he and Linden were above a boulder that appeared large enough to be secure. There he halted and sat down in the current with his back braced on the wall. She joined him. Water flooded over their legs; rain blinded their faces. He did not care. He had to rest.

After a few moments, she shifted, put her face to his ear. “Now what?”

Now what? He did not know. Exhaustion numbed his mind. But she was right; they could not remain where they were. He mustered a wan shout. “There's a path somewhere!”

“You don't know the way? You said you've been here before!”

“Ten years ago!” And he had been unconscious the second time; Saltheart Foamfollower had carried him.

Lightning lit her face for an instant. Her visage was smeared with rain. “What are we going to do?”

The thought of Foamfollower, the Giant who had been his friend, gave him what he needed. “Try!” Bracing himself on her shoulder, he lurched to his feet. She seemed to support his weight easily. “Maybe I'll remember!”

She stood up beside him, leaned close to yell, “I don't like this storm! It doesn't feel right!”

Doesn't feel-? He blinked at her. For a moment, he did not understand. To him, it was just a storm, natural violence like any other. But then he caught her meaning. To her, the storm felt un-natural. It offended some instinctive sensitivity in her.

Already, she was ahead of him; her senses were growing attuned to the Land, while his remained flat and dull, blind to the spirit of what he perceived. Ten years ago, he had been able to do what she had just done: identify the Tightness or wrongness, the health or corruption, of physical things and processes, of wind, rain, stone, wood, flesh. But now he could feel nothing except the storm's vehemence, as if such force had no meaning, no implications. No soul.

He muttered tired curses at himself. Were his senses merely slow in making the adjustment? Or had he lost the ability to be in harmony with the Land? Had leprosy and time bereft him entirely of that sensitivity? Hell and blood! he rasped weakly, bitterly. If Linden could see where he was blind-Aching at the old grief of his insufficiency, he tried to master himself. He expected Linden to ask him what was wrong. And that thought, too, was bitter; he did not want his frailties and fears, his innate wrongness, to be visible to her. But she did not question him. She was rigid with surprise or apprehension.

Her face was turned up the ravine.

He jerked around and tried to penetrate the downpour.

At once, he saw it-a faint yellow light in the distance.

It flickered toward them slowly, picked its way with care down the spine of the ravine. As it neared, a long blast of lightning revealed that it was a torch in the hand of a man. Then blackness and thunder crashed over them, and Covenant could see nothing but the strange flame. It burned bravely, impossibly, in spite of the deluge and battery of the storm.

It approached until it was close enough to light the man who held it. He was a short, stooped figure wearing a sodden robe. Rain gushed through his sparse hair and tangled beard, streamed in runnels down the creases of his old face, giving him a look of lunacy. He squinted at Covenant and Linden as if they had been incarnated out of nightmares to appal him.

Covenant held himself still, returned the old man's stare mutely.

Linden touched his arm as if she wanted to warn bun of something.

Suddenly, the old man jerked up his right hand, raised it with the palm forward, and spread his fingers.

Covenant copied the gesture. He did not know whether or not Lord Foul had prepared this encounter for him. But he needed shelter, food, information. And he was prepared to acknowledge anyone who could keep a brand alight in this rain. As he lifted his half-hand into the light, his ring gleamed dully on the second finger.

The sight shocked the old man. He winced, mumbled to himself, retreated a step as if in fear. Then he pointed tremulously at Covenant's ring. “White gold?” he cried. His voice shook.

“Yes!” Covenant replied.

“Halfhand?”

“Yes!”

“How are you named?” the man quavered.

Covenant struggled to drive each word through the storm. “Ur-Lord Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and white gold wielder!”

“Illender?” gasped the man as if the rain were suffocating him. “Prover of Life?”

“Yes!”

The old man retreated another step. The torchlight gave his visage a dismayed look. Abruptly, he turned, started scrambling frailly upward through the water and muck.

Over his shoulder, he wailed, “Come!”

“Who is that?” Linden asked almost inaudibly.

Covenant dismissed the question. “I don't know.”

She scrutinized him. “Do you trust him?”

“Who has a choice?” Before she could respond, he pushed away from the stone, used all his energy to force himself into motion after the old man.

His mouth was full of rain and the sour taste of weakness. The strain of the past weeks affected him like caducity. But the torch helped him find handholds on the walls and boulders. With Linden's support, he was able to heave forward against the heavy stream. Slowly, they made progress.

Some distance up the ravine, the old man entered a cut branching off to the right. A rough stair in the side of the cut led to its bottom. Freed of the torrents, Covenant found the strength to ask himself, Do you trust him? But the torch reassured him. He knew of nobody who could keep a brand burning in rain except the masters of wood-lore. Or the Lords. He was ready to trust anybody who served wood or stone with such potent diligence.

Carefully, he followed the old man along the bottom of the cut until it narrowed, became a high sheer cleft in the mountain rock. Then, abruptly, the cleft changed directions and opened into a small dell.

Towering peaks sheltered the vale from the wind. But there was no escape from the rain. It thrashed Covenant's head and shoulders like a club. He could barely see the torch as the old man crossed the valley.

With Linden, Covenant waded a swollen stream; and moments later they arrived at a squat stone dwelling which sat against the mountainside. The entry had no door; firelight scattered out at them as they approached. Hurrying now, they burst bedraggled and dripping into the single room of the house.

The old man stood in the centre of the room, still clutching his torch though a bright fire blazed in the hearth beyond him. He peered at Covenant with trepidation, ready to cringe, like a child expecting punishment.

Covenant stopped. His bruises ached to be near the fire; but he remained still to look around the room.

At once, a pang of anxiety smote him. Already, he could see that something had changed in the Land. Something fundamental.

The dwelling was furnished with an unexpected mixture of wood and stone. Stoneware bowls and urns sat on wooden shelves affixed to the sidewalls; wooden stools stood around a wooden table in one stone corner. And iron-there were iron utensils on the shelves, iron nails in the stools. Formerly, the people of stone and wood, Stonedownor and Woodhelvennin, had each kept to his own lore-not because they wished to be exclusive, but rather because then-special skills and knowledge required all their devotion.

For a moment, he faced the man, bore the old, half-wild gaze. Linden, too, studied the old man, measuring him uncertainly. But Covenant knew she was asking herself questions unlike the ones which mobbed into his mind. Had the Stonedownors and Woodhelvennin grown together, blended their lore? Or had-?

The world is not what it was.

A raw sickness twisted his heart. Without warning, he became conscious of smoke in the room.

Smoke!

He thrust past the old man, hastened to the hearth.

The wood lay on a pile of ash, burning warmly. Coals cracked and fell off the logs, red worms gnawing the flesh of trees. At intervals, wisps of smoke curled up into the room. The rain in the chimney made a low hissing noise.

Hellfire!

The people he had known here would never have voluntarily consumed wood for any purpose. They had always striven to use the life of wood, the Earthpower in it, without destroying the thing they used. Wood, soil, stone, water-the people of the Land had cherished every manifestation of life.

“Ur-Lord,” the old man groaned.

Covenant whirled. Grief burned like rage in him. He wanted to howl at the Despiser, What have you done? But both Linden and the old man were staring at him. Linden's eyes showed concern, as if she feared he had slipped over the edge into confusion. And the old man was in the grip of a private anguish. Fiercely, Covenant contained the yelling of his passion. But the strain of suppression bristled in his tone. “What keeps that torch burning?”

“I am ashamed!” The man's voice broke as if he were on the verge of weeping. He did not hear Covenant's question; his personal distress devoured him. “This temple,” he panted, “built by the most ancient fathers of my father's father-in preparation. We have done nothing! Other rooms fallen to ruin, sanctuaries-” He waved his brand fervidly. “We did nothing. In a score of generations, nothing. It is a hovel-unworthy of you. We did not believe the promise given into our trust-generation after generation of Unfettered too craven to put faith in the proudest prophecies. It would be right for you to strike me.”

“Strike you?” Covenant was taken aback. “No.” There were too many things here he did not understand. “What's the matter? Why are you afraid of me?”

“Covenant,” Linden breathed suddenly. “His hand. Look.”

Water dripped from the old man; water ran from them all. But the drops falling from the butt of the torch were red.

“Ur-Lord!” The man plunged to his knees. “I am unworthy.” He quivered with dismay. “I have trafficked in the knowledge of the wicked, gaining power against the Sunbane from those who scorn the promises I have sworn to preserve. Ah, spare me! I am shamed.” He dropped his brand, opened his left hand to Covenant.

The torch went out the instant he released it. As it struck the floor, it fell into ash.

Across his palm lay two long cuts. Blood ran from them as if it could not stop.

Covenant flinched. Thunder muttered angrily to itself in the distance. Nothing was left of the torch except ash. It had been held together, kept whole and burning, only by the power the old man had put into it. The power of his blood?

Covenant's brain reeled. A sudden memory of Joan stung him-Joan clawing the back of his hand, licking his fingers. Vertigo reft him of balance. He sat down heavily, slumped against the nearest wall. The rain echoed in his ears. Blood? Blood?

Linden was examining the old man's hand. She turned it to the firelight, spread the fingers; her grip on his wrist slowed the flow of blood. “It's clean.” Her voice was flat, impersonal. “Needs a bandage to stop the bleeding. But there's no infection.”

No infection, Covenant breathed. His thoughts limped like cripples. “How can you tell?”

She was concentrating on the wound. “What?”

He laboured to say what he meant. “How can you tell there's no infection?”

“I don't know.” His question seemed to trigger surprise in her. “I can see it. I can see”- her astonishment mounted — “the pain. But it's clean. How-? Can't you?”

He shook his head. She confirmed his earlier impression; her senses were already becoming attuned to the Land.

His were not. He was blind to everything not written on the surface. Why? He closed his eyes. Old rue throbbed in him. He had forgotten that numbness could hurt so much.

After a moment, she moved; he could hear her searching around the room. When she returned to the old man's side, she was tearing a piece of cloth to form bandages.

You will not fail- Covenant felt that he had already been given up for lost. The thought was salt to his sore heart.

Smoke? Blood? There's only one way to hurt a man. Give him back something broken. Damnation.

But the old man demanded his attention. The man had bowed his wet grey head to the stone. His hands groped to touch Covenant's boots. “Ur-Lord,” he moaned, “Ur-Lord. At last you have come. The Land is saved.”

That obeisance pulled Covenant out of his inner gyre. He could not afford to be overwhelmed by ignorance or loss. And he could not bear to be treated as if he were some kind of saviour; he could not live with such an image of himself. He climbed erect, then took hold of the old man's arms and drew him to his feet.

The man's eyes rolled fearfully, gleaming in the firelight. To reassure him, Covenant spoke evenly, quietly.

“Tell me your name.”

“I am Nassic son of Jous son of Prassan,” the old man replied in a fumbling voice. “Descended in direct lineage son by son from the Unfettered One.”

Covenant winced. The Unfettered Ones he had known were hermits freed from all normal responsibilities so that they could pursue their private visions. An Unfettered One had once saved his life-and died. Another had read his dreams-and told him that he dreamed the truth. He took a stringent grip on himself. “What was his calling?”

“Ur-Lord, he saw your return. Therefore he came to this place-to the vale below Kevin's Watch, which was given its name in an age so long past that none remember its meaning.”

Briefly, Nassic's tone stabilized, as if he were reciting something he had memorized long ago. “He built the temple as a place of welcome for you, and a place of healing, for it was not forgotten among the people of those years that your own world is one of great hazard and strife, inflicting harm even upon its heroes. In his vision, he beheld the severe doom of the Sunbane, though to him it was nameless as nightmare, and he foresaw that the Unbeliever, ur-Lord Illender, Prover of Life, would return to combat it. From son to son he handed down his vision, faith un-”

Then he faltered. “Ah, shame,” he muttered. “Temple-faith- healing-Land. All ruins.” But indignation stiffened him. “Fools will cry for mercy. They deserve only retribution. For lo! The Unbeliever has come. Let the Clave and all its works wail to be spared. Let the very sun tremble in its course! It will avail them nothing! Woe unto you, wicked and abominable! The-”

“Nassic.” Covenant forced the old man to stop. Linden was watching them keenly. Questions crowded her face; but Covenant ignored them. “Nassic,” he asked of the man's white stare, “what is this Sunbane?”

“Sunbane?” Nassic lost his fear in amazement. “Do you ask-? How can you not-?” His hands tugged at his beard. “Why else have you come?”

Covenant tightened his grip. “Just tell me what it is.”

“It is-why, it is yes, it- ” Nassic stumbled to a halt, then cried in a sudden appeal, “Ur-Lord, what is it not? It is sun and rain and blood and desert and fear and the screaming of trees.” He squirmed with renewed abasement. “It was-it was the fire of my torch. Ur-Lord!” Misery clenched his face like a fist. He tried to drop to his knees again.

“Nassic.” Covenant held him erect, hunted for some way to reassure him. “We're not going to harm you. Can't you see that?” Then another thought occurred to him. Remembering Linden's injury, his own bruises, he said, “Your hand's still bleeding. We've both been hurt. And I-” He almost said, I can't see what she sees. But the words stuck in his throat. “I've been away for a long time. Do you have any hurtloam?”

Hurtloam? Linden's expression asked.

“Hurtloam?” queried Nassic. “What is hurtloam?”

What is-? Distress lurched across Covenant's features. What-? Shouts flared in him like screams, Hurtloam! Earthpower! Life! “Hurtloam,” he rasped savagely. “The mud that heals.” His grasp shook Nassic's frail bones.

“Forgive me, Ur-Lord. Be not angry. I-”

“It was here! In this valley!” Lena had healed him with it.

Nassic found a moment of dignity. “I know nothing of hurtloam. I am an old man, and have never heard the name spoken.”

“Damnation!” Covenant spat. “Next you're going to tell me you've never heard of Earthpower!”

The old man sagged. “Earthpower?” he breathed. “Earthpower?”

Covenant's hands ground his giddy dismay into Nassic's thin arms. But Linden was at his side, trying to loosen his grip. “Covenant! He's telling the truth!”

Covenant jerked his gaze like a whip to her face.

Her lips were tight with strain, but she did not let herself flinch. “He doesn't know what you're talking about.”

She silenced him. He believed her; she could hear the truth in Nassic's voice, just as she could see the lack of infection in his cuts. No hurtloam? He bled inwardly. Forgotten? Lost? Images of desecration poured through him. Have mercy. The Land without hurtloam. Without Earthpower? The weight of Nassic's revelation was too much for him. He sank to the floor like an invalid.

Linden stood over him. She was groping for decision, insight; but he could not help her. After a moment, she said, “Nassic.” Her tone was severe. “Do you have any food?”

“Food?” he replied as if she had reminded him of his inadequacy. “Yes. No. It is unworthy.”

“We need food.”

Her statement brooked no argument. Nassic bowed, went at once to the opposite wall, where he began lifting down crude bowls and pots from the shelves.

Linden came to Covenant, knelt in front of him. “What is it?” she asked tightly. He could not keep the despair out of his face. “What's wrong?”

He did not want to answer. He had spent too many years in the isolation of his leprosy; her desire to understand him only aggravated his pain. He could not bear to be so exposed. Yet he could not refuse the demand of her hard mouth, her soft eyes. Her life was at issue as much as his. He made an effort of will. “Later.” His voice ached through his teeth. “I need time to think about it.”

Her jaws locked; darkness wounded her eyes. He looked away, so that he would not be led to speak before he had regained his self-mastery.

Shortly, Nassic brought bowls of dried meat, fruit, and unleavened bread, which he offered tentatively, as if he knew they deserved to be rejected. Linden accepted hers with a difficult smile; but Nassic did not move until Covenant had mustered the strength to nod his approval. Then the old man took pots and collected rainwater for them to drink.

Covenant stared blindly at his food without tasting it. He seemed to have no reason to bother feeding himself. Yet he knew that was not true; in fact, he was foundering in reasons. But the impossibility of doing justice to them all made his resolution falter. Had he really sold his soul to the Despiser-?

But he was a leper; he had spent long years learning the answer to his helplessness. Leprosy was incurable. Therefore lepers disciplined themselves to pay meticulous attention to their immediate needs. They ignored the abstract immensity of their burdens, concentrated instead on the present, moment by moment. He clung to that pragmatic wisdom. He had no other answer.

Numbly, he put a piece of fruit in his mouth, began to chew.

After that, habit and hunger came to his aid. Perhaps his answer was not a good one; but it defined him, and he stood by it.

Stood or fell, he did not know which.

Nassic waited humbly, solicitously, while Covenant and Linden ate; but as soon as they finished, he said, “Ur-Lord.” He sounded eager. “I am your servant. It is the purpose in my life to serve you, as it was the purpose of Jous my father and Prassan his father throughout the long line of the Unfettered.” He seemed unmindful of the quaver in his words. “You are not come too soon. The Sunbane multiplies in the Land. What will you do?”

Covenant sighed. He felt unready to deal with such questions. But the ritual of eating had steadied him. And both Nassic and Linden deserved some kind of reply. Slowly, he said, “We'll have to go to Revelstone-” He spoke the name hesitantly. Would Nassic recognize it? If there were no more Lords — Perhaps Revelstone no longer existed. Or perhaps all the names had changed. Enough time had passed for anything to happen.

But Nassic crowed immediately, “Yes! Vengeance upon the Clave! It is good!”

The Clave? Covenant wondered. But he did not ask. Instead, he tested another familiar name. “But first we'll have to go to Mithil Stonedown-”

“No!” the man interrupted. His vehemence turned at once into protest and trepidation. “You must not. They are wicked-wicked! Worshippers of the Sunbane. They say that they abhor the Clave, but they do not. Their fields are sown with blood!”

Blood again; Sunbane; the Clave. Too many things he did not know. He concentrated on what he was trying to ascertain. Apparently, the names he remembered were known to Nassic in spite of their age. That ended his one dim hope concerning the fate of the Earthpower. A new surge of futility beat at him. How could he possibly fight Lord Foul if there were no Earthpower? No, worse-if there were no Earthpower, what was left to fight for?

But Nassic's distraught stare and Linden's clenched, arduous silence demanded responses. Grimacing, he thrust down his sense of futility. He was intimately acquainted with hopelessness, impossibility, gall; he knew how to limit their power over him.

He took a deep breath and said, “There's no other way. We can't get out of here without going through Mithil Stonedown.”

“Ah, true,” the old man groaned. “That is true.” He seemed almost desperate. "Yet you must not-They are wicked! They harken to the words of the Clave-words of abomination. They mock all old promises, saying that the Unbeliever is a madness in the minds of the Unfettered. You must not go there."

“Then how-?” Covenant frowned grimly. What's happened to them? I used to have friends there.

Abruptly, Nassic reached a decision. “I will go. To my son. His name is Sunder. He is wicked, like the rest. But he is my son. He comes to me when the mood is upon him, and I speak to him, telling him what is proper to his calling. He is not altogether corrupted. He will aid us to pass by the Stonedown. Yes.” At once, he threw himself toward the entryway.

“Wait!” Covenant jumped to his feet. Linden joined him.

“I must go!” cried Nassic urgently.

“Wait until the rain stops.” Covenant pleaded against the frenzy in Nassic's eyes. The man looked too decrepit to endure any more exposure. “We're not in that much of a hurry.”

“It will not halt until nightfall. I must make haste!”

“Then at least take a torch!”

Nassic flinched as if he had been scourged. “Ah, you shame me! I know the path. I must redeem my doubt.” Before Covenant or Linden could stop him, he ran out into the rain.

Linden started after nun; but Covenant stayed her. Lightning blazed overhead. In the glare, they saw Nassic stumbling frenetically toward the end of the dell. Then thunder and blackness hit, and he disappeared as if he had been snuffed out. “Let him go,” sighed Covenant. “H we chase him, we'll probably fall off a cliff somewhere.” He held her until she nodded. Then he returned wearily to the fire.

She followed him. When he placed his back to the hearth, she confronted him. The dampness of her hair darkened her face, intensifying the lines between her brows, on either side of her mouth. He expected anger, protest, some outburst against the insanity of her situation. But when she spoke, her voice was flat, controlled.

“This isn't what you expected.”

“No.” He cursed himself because he could not rise above his dismay. “No. Something terrible has happened,”

She did not waver. “How can that be? You said the last time you were here was ten years ago. What can happen in ten years?”

Her query reminded him that he had not yet told her about Lord Foul's prophecy. But now was not the time: she was suffering from too many other incomprehensions. “Ten years in our world.” For her sake, he did not say, the real world. “Time is different here. It's faster-the way dreams are almost instantaneous sometimes. I've-” He had difficulty meeting her stare; even his knowledge felt like shame. “I've actually been here three times before. Each time, I was unconscious for a few hours, and months went by here. So ten years for me-Oh, bloody hell!” The Despiser had said, For a score of centuries. For nearly as many centuries more, “If the ratio stays the same, we're talking about three or four thousand years.”

She accepted this as if it were just one more detail that defied rationality. “Well, what could have happened? What's so important about hurtloam?”

He wanted to hide his head, conceal his pain; he felt too much exposed to the new penetration of her senses. “Hurtloam was a special mud that could heal-almost anything.” Twice, while in the Land, it had cured his leprosy. But he shied away from the whole subject of healing. If he told her what hurtloam had done for him in the past, he would also have to explain why it had not done him any lasting good. He would have to tell her that the Land was physically self-contained- that it had no tangible connection to their world. The healing of his chest meant nothing. When they regained consciousness, she would find that their bodily continuity in their world was complete. Everything would be the same.

If they did not awaken soon, she would not have time to treat his wound.

Because she was already under so much stress, he spared her that knowledge. Yet he could not contain his bitterness. “But that's not the point. Look.” He pointed at the hearth. "Smoke. Ashes. The people I knew never built fires that destroyed wood. They didn't have to. For them, everything around them-wood, water, stone, flesh-every part of the physical world-was full of what they called Earthpower. The power of life. They could raise fire-or make boats flow upstream-or send messages-by using the Earthpower in wood instead of the wood itself.

“That was what made them who they were. The Earthpower was the essence of the Land.” Memories thronged in him, visions of the Lords, of the masters of stone-and wood-lore. "It was so vital to them, so sustaining, that they gave their lives to it. Did everything they could to serve it, rather than exploit it. It was strength, sentience, passion. Life. A fire like this would have horrified them."

But words were inadequate. He could not convey his longing for a world where aspen and granite, water and soil, nature itself, were understood, revered for their potency and loveliness. A world with a soul, deserving to be treasured. Linden gazed at him as if he were babbling. With a silent snarl, he gave up trying to explain. “Apparently,” he said, "they've lost it. It's forgotten. Or dead. Now they have this Sunbane. If I understand what I've been hearing-which I doubt-the Sunbane was what kept Nassic's torch burning in the rain. And he had to cut his hand to do it. And the wood was still consumed.

“He says the Sunbane is causing this rain.” Covenant shuddered involuntarily; firelight reflecting off the downpour beyond the entryway made the storm look vicious and intolerable.

Her eyes searched him. The bones of her face seemed to press against the skin, as if her skull itself protested against so many alien circumstances. “I don't know anything about it. None of this makes sense.” She faltered. He could see fears crowding the edges of her vision. “It's all impossible. I can't. ” She shot a harried glance around the room, thrust her hands into her hair as though she sought to pull imminent hysteria off her features. “I'm going crazy.”

“I know.” He recognized her desperation. His own wildness when he was first taken to the Land had led him to commit the worst crimes of his life. He wanted to reach out to her, protect her; but the numbness of his hands prevented him. Instead, he said intensely, “Don't give up. Ask questions. Keep trying. I'll tell you everything I can.”

For a moment, her gaze ached toward him like the arms of an abandoned child. But then her hands bunched into fists. A grimace like a clench of intransigence knotted her mien. “Questions,” she breathed through her teeth. With a severe effort, she took hold of herself. “Yes.”

Her tone accused him as if he were to blame for her distress. But he accepted the responsibility. He could have prevented her from following Mm into the woods. If he had had the courage.

“All right,” she gritted. “You've been here before. What makes you so important? What did you do? Why does Foul want you? What's an ur-Lord?”

Covenant sighed inwardly-an exhalation of relief at her determination to survive. That was what he wanted from her. A sudden weariness dimmed his sight; but he took no account of it.

“I was Berek reborn.”

The memory was not pleasant; it contained too much guilt, too much sorrow and harm. But he accepted it. “Berek was one of the ancient heroes-thousands of years before I came along. According to the legends, he discovered the Earthpower, and made the Staff of Law to wield it. All the lore of the Earthpower came down from him. He was the Lord-Fatherer, the founder of the Council of Lords. They led the defence of the Land against Foul.”

The Council, he groaned to himself, remembering Mhoram, Prothall, Elena. Hell and blood! His voice shook as he continued. “When I showed up, they welcomed me as a sort of avatar of Berek. He was known to have lost the last two fingers of his right hand in a war.” Linden's gaze sharpened momentarily; but she did not interrupt. "So I was made an ur-Lord of the Council. Most of those other titles came later. After I defeated Foul.

“But Unbeliever was one I took for myself. For a long time here, I was sure I was dreaming, but I didn't know what to do about it.” Sourly, he muttered, “I was afraid to get involved. It had something to do with being a leper.” He hoped she would accept this non-explanation; he did not want to have to tell her about his crimes. “But I was wrong. As long as you have some idea of what's happening to you, 'real' or 'unreal' doesn't matter. You have to stand up for what you care about; if you don't, you lose control of who you are.” He paused, met her scrutiny so that she could see the clarity of his conviction. “I ended up caring about the Land a lot.”

“Because of the Earthpower?”

“Yes.” Pangs of loss stung his heart. Fatigue and strain had shorn him of his defences. “The land was incredibly beautiful. And the way the people loved it, served it-that was beautiful, too. Lepers,” he concluded mordantly, “are susceptible to beauty.” In her own way, Linden seemed beautiful to him.

She listened to him like a physician trying to diagnose a rare disease. When he stopped, she said, “You called yourself, 'Unbeliever and white gold wielder.' What does white gold have to do with it?”

He scowled involuntarily. To cover his pain, he lowered himself to the floor, sat against the wall of the hearth. That question touched him deeply, and he was too tired to give it the courage it deserved. But her need for knowledge was peremptory. “My wedding ring,” he murmured. "When Joan divorced me, I was never able to stop wearing it. I was a leper-I felt that I'd lost everything. I thought my only link with the human race was the fact that I used to be married.

“But here it's some kind of talisman. A tool for what they call wild magic-'the wild magic that destroys peace.' I can't explain it.” To himself, he cursed the paucity of his valour.

Linden sat down near him, kept watching his face. “You think I can't handle the truth.”

He winced at her percipience. “I don't know. But I know how hard it is. It sure as hell isn't easy for me.”

Outside, the rain beat with steady ire into the valley; thunder and lightning pummelled each other among the mountains. But inside the hut the air was warm, tinged with smoke like a faint soporific. And he had gone for many days without rest. He closed his eyes, partly to acknowledge his exhaustion, partly to gain a respite from Linden's probing.

But she was not finished. “Nassic-” Her voice was as direct as if she had reached out and touched him. “He's crazy.”

With an effort of will, Covenant forced himself to ask, “What makes you say that?”

She was silent until he opened his eyes, looked at her. Then, defensively, she said, “I can feel it-the imbalance in him. Can't you? It's in his face, his voice, everything. I saw it right away. When he was coming down the ravine.”

Grimly, he put off his fatigue. “What are you trying to tell me? That we can't trust him? Can't believe him?”

“Maybe.” Now she could not meet his gaze. She studied the clasp of her hands on her knees. “I'm not sure. All I know is, he's demented. He's been lonely too long. And he believes what he says.”

“He's not the only one,” Covenant muttered. Deliberately, he stretched out to make himself more comfortable. He was too tired to worry about Nassic's sanity. But he owed Linden one other answer. Before he let go of himself, he replied, “No, I can't.”

As weariness washed over him, he was dimly aware that she stood up and began to pace beside his recumbent form.

He was awakened by silence. The rain had stopped. For a moment, he remained still, enjoying the end of the storm. The rest had done him good; he felt stronger, more capable.

When he raised his head, he saw Linden in the entryway, facing the vale and the clear cool night. Her shoulders were tense; strain marked the way she leaned against the stone. As he got to his feet, she turned toward him. She must have replenished the fire while he slept. The room was bright; he could see her face clearly. The corners of her eyes were lined as if she had been squinting for a long time at something which discomfited her.

“It stopped at nightfall.” She indicated the absence of rain with a jerk of her head. “He was right about that.”

The trouble in her worried him. He tried to sound casual as he asked, “What have you been thinking?”

She shrugged. “Nothing new. 'Face it. Go forward. Find out what happens.'” Her gaze was bent inward on memories. “I've been living that way for years. It's the only way to find out how much what you're trying to get away from costs.”

He searched her for some glimpse of what she meant. “You know,” he said slowly, “you haven't told me much about yourself.”

She stiffened, drew severity across her countenance like a shield. Her tone denied his question. “Nassic isn't back yet.”

For a moment, he considered her refusal. Did she have that much past hurt to hide? Were her defences aimed at him, or at herself? But then the import of her words penetrated him. “He isn't?” Even an old man should have been able to make the trip twice in this amount of time.

“I haven't seen him.”

“Damnation!” Covenant's throat was suddenly dry. “What the hell happened to him?”

“How should I know?” Her ire betrayed the fraying of her nerves. “Remember me? I'm the one who hasn't been here before.”

He wanted to snap at her; but he held himself back grimly. “I didn't mean it that way. Maybe he fell off the cliff. Maybe Mithil Stonedown is even more dangerous than he thought. Maybe he doesn't even have a son.”

He could see her swallowing her vexation, wishing herself immune to pressure. “What are we going to do?”

“What choice have we got? We have to go down there ourselves.” Sternly, he compelled himself to face her doubt of Nassic. “It's hard for me to believe we can't trust those people. They were my friends when I didn't deserve to have any friends.”

She considered him. “That was three thousand years ago.”

Yes, he muttered bleakly. And he had given them little in return except harm. If they remembered him at all, they would be justified in remembering only the harm.

With a sudden nausea, he realized that he was going to have to tell Linden what he had done to Mithil Stonedown, to Lena Atiaran-daughter. The doctor was the first woman he had met in ten years who was not afraid of him. And she had tried to save his life. What other protection could he give her against himself?

He lacked the courage. The words were in his mind, but he, could not utter them. To escape her eyes, he moved abruptly past her out of Nassic's stone dwelling.

The night was a vault of crystal. All the clouds were gone. The air was cold and sharp; and stars glittered like flecks of joy across the immaculate deeps. They gave some visibility. Below the dark crouch of the peaks, he could see the stream flowing turgidly down the length of the dell. He followed it; he remembered this part of the way well enough. But then he slowed his pace as he realized that Linden was not behind him.

“Covenant!”

Her cry scaled the night. Echoes repeated against the mountain-; sides.

He went back to her at a wild run.

She knelt on a pile of rubble like a cairn beside the hut-the broken remains of Nassic's temple, fallen into desuetude. She was examining a dark form which lay strangely atop the debris.,

Covenant sprang forward, peered at the body. ',

Bloody hell, he moaned. Nassic.

The old man lay embracing the ruins. From the centre of his back protruded the handle of a knife.;

“Don't touch that,” Linden panted. “It's still hot.” Her mouth was full of crushed horror.

Still-? Covenant kicked aside his dismay. “Take his legs. We'll carry him into the house.”

She did not move. She looked small and abject in the night.

To make her move, he lashed at her, “I told you it was dangerous. Did you think I was kidding? Take his legs!”

Her voice was a still cold articulation of darkness. “He's dead. There's nothing we can do.”

The sound of her desolation choked his protests. For one keening moment, he feared that he had lost her — that her mind had gone over the edge. But then she shifted. Her hair fell forward, hid her face, as she bent to slip her arms under Nassic's legs.

Covenant lifted him by the shoulders. Together, they bore him into his house.

He was already stiff.

They set him down gently in the centre of the floor. Covenant inspected him. His skin was cold. There was no blood in his robe around the knife; it must have been washed away by the rain. He must have lain dead in the rain for a long time.

Linden did not watch. Her eyes clinched the black iron knife. “It didn't kill him right away,” she said hoarsely. “It didn't hit him right. He bled to death.” The bones of her face seemed to throb with vehemence. “This is evil.”

The way she uttered that word evil sent cold fear scrabbling down Covenant's spine. He knew what she meant; he had formerly been able to perceive such things himself. She was looking at the cruelty of the hand which had held that knife, seeing the eager malice which had inspired the blow. And if the iron were still hot-He swallowed harshly. Nassic's killer must have been someone of great and brutal power.

He scrambled for explanations. “Whoever did it knew we were here. Or else why leave him out there? He wanted us to find the body-after he got away.” He closed his eyes, forced some clarity onto his spinning thoughts. “Nassic was killed because of us. To keep him from talking to the Stonedown. Or from talking to us. By hell, this stinks of Foul.”

Linden was not listening; her own reaction dominated her. “Nobody does this.” She sounded lorn, fear-ravaged.

He heard the strangeness of her protest; but he could not stop himself. His old anger for the victims of Despite drove him. “It takes a special kind of killer,” he growled, “to leave a hot knife behind. Foul has plenty of that kind of help. He's perfectly capable of having Nassic killed just to keep us from getting too much information. Or to manipulate us somehow.”

“Nobody kills like this. For pleasure.” Dull anguish blunted her tone, blinded her face. “People don't do that.”

“Of course they don't” Her dismay reached him; but the frailty of Nassic's dead limbs affronted him to the marrow of his bones, made his reply savage. “He probably decided to take a nap in the rain, and this knife just fell on him out of nowhere.”

She was deaf to his sarcasm-too intimately shocked to recognize him at all. “People kill because they're hungry. Afraid.” She struggled for certitude against the indefeasible iron. “Driven. Because someone, something, forces them.” Her tone sharpened as if she were gathering screams. “Nobody likes it.”

“No.” The sight of her distress pulled Covenant to her. He tried to confront her mounting repudiation. “Everybody likes it. Everybody likes power. But most people control it. Because they hate it, too. This is no different than any other murder. It's just more obvious.”

A flinch of revulsion twisted her face; his assertion seemed to hurt her. For an instant, he feared that her mind was going to fail. But then her eyes climbed to his face. The effort of self-mastery darkened them like blood. “I want-” Her voice quavered; she crushed it flat. “I want to meet the sonofabitch who did this. So I can see for myself.”

Covenant nodded, gritted his own black ire. “I think you're going to get the chance.” He, too, wanted to meet Nassic's slayer. “We can't try to second-guess Foul. He knows more than we do. And we can't stay here. But we've lost our guide-our only chance to learn what's happening. We have to go to Mithil Stonedown.” Grimly, he concluded, “Since the killer didn't attack us here, he's probably waiting for us in the village.”

For a long moment, she remained motionless, mustering her resources. Then she said tightly, “Let's go.”

He did not hesitate. Nassic had not even been given the dignity of a clean death. With Linden at his side, he marched out into the night.

But in spite of the violence in him, he did not allow himself to rush. The stars did not shed an abundance of light; and the rain had left the floor of the dell slick with mud. The path to Mithil Stonedown was hazardous. He did not intend to come to harm through recklessness.

He made his way strictly down the valley; and at its end, he followed the stream into a crooked file between sheer walls, then turned away along a crevice that ascended at right angles to the file. The crevice was narrow and crude, difficult going in the star-blocked dark; but it levelled after a while, began to tend downward. Before long, he gained a steep open slope-the eastern face of the Mithil valley.

Dimly in the distance below him, the valley widened like a wedge northward toward an expanse of plains. A deeper blackness along the valley bottom looked like a river.

Beside the river, somewhat to his right, lay a cluster of tiny lights.

“Mithil Stonedown,” he murmured. But then vertigo forced him to turn away leftward along a faint path. He could not repress his memory of the time he had walked this path with Lena. Until he told Linden what he remembered, what he had done, she would not know who he was, would not be able to choose how she wished to respond to him. Or to the Land.

He needed her to understand his relationship to the Land. He needed her support, her skills, her strength. Why else had she been chosen?

A cold, penetrating dampness thickened the air; but the exertion of walking kept him warm. And the path became steadily less difficult as it descended toward the valley bottom. As the moon began to crest the peaks, he gave up all pretence of caution. He was hunting for the courage to say what had to be said.

Shortly, the path curved off the slopes, doubled back to follow the river outward. He glanced at Linden from time to time, wondering where she had learned the toughness, unwisdom, or desperation which enabled or drove her to accompany him. He ached for the capacity to descry the truth of her, determine whether her severity came from conviction or dread.

She did not believe in evil.

He had no choice; he had to tell her.

Compelling himself with excoriations, he touched her arm, stopped her. She looked at him. “Linden.” She was alabaster in the moonlight-pale and not to be touched. His mouth winced. “There's something I've got to say.” His visage felt like old granite. “Before we go any farther.” Pain made him whisper.

"The first time I was here, I met a girl. Lena. She was just a kid, — but she was my friend. She kept me alive on Kevin's Watch, when I was so afraid it could have killed me." His long loneliness cried out against this self-betrayal.

“I raped her.”

She stared at him. Her lips formed soundless words: Raped-? In her gaze, he could see himself becoming heinous.

He did not see the shadow pass over their heads, had no warning of their danger until the net landed on them, tangling them instantly together. Figures surged out of the darkness around them. One of the attackers hit them in the faces with something which broke open and stank like a rotten melon.

Then he could no longer breathe. He fell with Linden in his arms as if they were lovers.

Six: The Graveller

HE awoke urgently, with a suffocating muck on his face that made him strain to move his arms to clear the stuff away. But his hands were tied behind his back. He gagged helplessly for a moment, until he found that he could breathe.

The dry, chill air was harsh in his lungs. But he relished it. Slowly, it drove back the nausea.

From somewhere near him, he heard Linden say flatly, “You'll be all right. They must have hit us with some kind of anaesthetic. It's like ether-makes you feel sick. But the nausea goes away. I don't think we've been hurt.”

He rested briefly on the cold stone, then rolled off his chest and struggled into a sitting position. The bonds made the movement difficult; a wave of dizziness went through him, “Friends,” he muttered. But the air steadied him. “Nassic was right.”

“Nassic was right,” she echoed as if the words did not interest her.

They were in a single room, as constricted as a cell. A heavy curtain covered the doorway; but opposite the entrance a barred window let the pale grey of dawn into the room-the late dawn of a sunrise delayed by mountains. The bars were iron.

Linden sat across from him. Her arms angled behind her; her wrists, too, were bound. Yet she had managed to clean the pulp from her cheeks. Shreds of it clung to the shoulders of her shirt.

His own face wore the dried muck like a leper's numbness.

He shifted so that he could lean against the wall. The bonds cut into his wrists. He closed his eyes. A trap, he murmured. Nassic's death was a trap. He had been killed so that Covenant and Linden would blunder into Mithil Stonedown's defences and be captured. What's Foul trying to do? he asked the darkness behind his eyelids. Make us fight these people?

“Why did you do it?” Linden said. Her tone was level, as if she had already hammered all the emotion out of it. “Why did you tell me about that girl?”

His eyes jumped open to look at her. But in the dun light he was unable to discern her expression. He wanted to say, Leave it alone, we've got other things to worry about. But she had an absolute right to know the truth about him.

“I wanted to be honest with you.” His guts ached at the memory. “The things I did when I was here before are going to affect what happens to us now. Foul doesn5t forget. And I was afraid”- he faltered at the cost of his desire for rectitude — “you might trust me without knowing what you were trusting. I don't want to betray you — by not being what you think I am.”

She did not reply. Her eyes were shadows which told him nothing. Abruptly, the pressure of his unassuaged bitterness began to force words out of him like barbs.

“After my leprosy was diagnosed, and Joan divorced me, I was impotent for a year. Then I came here. Something I couldn't understand was happening. The Land was healing parts of me that had been dead so long I'd forgotten I had them. And Lena-” The pang of her stung him like an acid. “She was so beautiful I still have nightmares about it. The first night-It was too much for me. Lepers aren't supposed to be potent.”

He did not give Linden a chance to respond; he went on, reliving his old self-judgment. "Everybody paid for it. I couldn't get away from the consequences. Her mother ended up committing a kind of suicide. Her father's life was warped. The man who wanted to marry her lost everything. Her own mind came apart.

“But I didn't stop there. I caused her death, and the death of her daughter, Elena- my daughter. Because I kept trying to escape the consequences. Everybody refused to punish me. I was Berek reborn. They wanted me to save the Land. Lena”- oh, Lena! — “got butchered trying to save my life.”

Linden listened without moving. She looked like a figure of stone against the wall, blank and unforgiving, as if no mere recitation of guilt could touch her. But her knees were pressed tightly, defensively, to her chest. When he ceased, she said thickly, “You shouldn't have told me.”

“I had to.” What else could he say? “It's who I am.”

“No.” She protested as if an accusation of evil had been raised between them. “It isn't who you are. You didn't do it intentionally, did you? You saved the Land, didn't you?”

He faced her squarely. “Yes. Eventually.”

“Then it's over. Done with.” Her head dropped to her knees. She squeezed her forehead against them as if to restrain the pounding of her thoughts. “Leave me alone.”

Covenant studied the top of her head, the way her hair fell about her thighs, and sought to comprehend. He had expected her to denounce him for what he had done, not for having confessed it. Why was she so vulnerable to it? He knew too little about her. But how could he ask her to tell him things which she believed people should not know about each other?

“I don't understand.” His voice was gruff with uncertainty. “If that's the way you feel-why did you keep coming back? You went to a lot of trouble to find out what I was hiding.”

She kept her face concealed. “I said, leave me alone.”

“I can't.” A vibration of anger ran through him. “You wouldn't be here if you hadn't followed me. I need to know why you did it. So I can decide whether to trust you.”

Her head snapped up. “I'm a doctor.”

“That's not enough,” he said rigidly.

The light from the window was growing slowly. Now he could read parts of her countenance-her mouth clenched and severe, her eyes like dark gouges below her forehead. She regarded him as if he were trespassing on her essential privacy.

After a long moment, she said softly, “I followed you because I thought you were strong. Every time I saw you, you were practically prostrate on your feet. You were desperate for help. But you stood there acting as if even exhaustion couldn't touch you.” Her words were fraught with gall. “I thought you were strong. But now it turns out you were just running away from your guilt, like anybody else. Trying to make yourself innocent again, by selling yourself for Joan. What was I supposed to do?” Quiet fury whetted her tone. “Let you commit suicide?”

Before he could respond, she went on, “You use guilt the same way you use leprosy. You want people to reject you, stay away from you-make a victim out of you. So you can recapture your innocence.” Gradually, her intensity subsided into a dull rasp. “I've already seen more of it than I can stand. If you think I'm such a threat to you, at least leave me alone.”

Again she hid her face in her knees.

Covenant stared at her in silence. Her judgment hurt him like a demonstration of mendacity. Was that what he was doing-giving her a moral reason to repudiate him because she was unmoved by the physical reason of his leprosy? Was he so much afraid of being helped or trusted? Cared about? Gaping at this vision of himself, he heaved to his feet, lurched to the window as if he needed to defend his eyes by looking at something else.

But the view only gave credence to his memories. It verified that he and Linden were in Mithil Stonedown. The wall and roof of another stone dwelling stood directly in front of nun; and on either side of it he could see the corners of other buildings. Their walls were ancient, weathered and battered by centuries of use. They were made without mortar, formed of large slabs and chunks of rock held together by their own weight, topped by flat roofs. And beyond the roofs were the mountains.

Above them, the sky had a brown tinge, as if it were full of dust.

He had been here before, and could not deny the truth; he was " indeed afraid. Too many people who cared about him had already paid horrendously to give him help.

Linden's silence throbbed at his back like a bruise; but he remained still, and watched the sunrise flow down into the valley.? When the tension in him became insistent, he said without turning,' “I wonder what they're going to do with us.”

As if in answer, the room brightened suddenly as the curtain" was thrust aside. He swung around and found a man in the doorway.

The Stonedownor was about Linden's height, but broader and more muscular than Covenant. His black hair and dark skin were emphasized by the colour of his stiff leather jerkin and leggings. He wore nothing on his feet. In his right hand he held a long, wooden staff as if it articulated his authority.

He appeared to be about thirty. His features had a youthful cast; but they were contradicted by two deep frown lines above the bridge of his nose, and by the dullness of his eyes, which seemed to have been worn dim by too much accumulated and useless regret. The muscles at the corners of his jaw bulged as if he had been grinding his teeth for years.

His left arm hung at his side. From elbow to knuckle, it was intaglioed with fine white scars.

He did not speak; he stood facing Covenant and Linden as if he expected them to know why he had come.

Linden lurched to her feet. Covenant took two steps forward, so that they stood shoulder-to-shoulder before the Stonedownor.

The man hesitated, searched Covenant's face. Then he moved into the room. With his left hand, he reached out to Covenant's battered cheek.

Covenant winced slightly, then held himself still while the Stonedownor carefully brushed the dried pulp from his face.

He felt a pang of gratitude at the touch; it seemed to accord him more dignity than he deserved. He studied the man's brown, strong mien closely, trying to decipher what lay behind it.

When he was done, the Stonedownor turned and left the room, holding the curtain open for Covenant and Linden.

Covenant looked toward her to see if she needed encouragement. But she did not meet his gaze. She was already moving. He took a deep breath, and followed her out of the hut.

He found himself on the edge of the broad, round, open centre of Mithil Stonedown. It matched his memory of it closely. All the houses faced inward; and the ones beyond the inner ring were positioned to give as many as possible direct access to the centre. But now he could see that several of them had fallen into serious disrepair, as if their occupants did not know how to mend them. If that were true- He snarled to himself. How could these people have forgotten their stone-lore?

The sun shone over the eastern ridge into his face. Squinting at it indirectly, he saw that the orb had lost its blue aurora. Now it wore pale brown like a translucent cymar.

The Stonedown appeared deserted. All the door-curtains were closed. Nothing moved-not in the village, not on the mountainsides or in the air. He could not even hear the river. The valley lay under the dry dawn as if it had been stricken dumb.

A slow scraping of fear began to abrade his nerves.

The man with the staff strode out into the circle, beckoning for Covenant and Linden to follow him across the bare stone. As they did so, he gazed morosely around the village. He leaned on his staff as if the thews which held his life together were tired.

But after a moment he shook himself into action. Slowly, he raised the staff over his head. In a determined tone, he said, “This is the centre.”

At once, the curtains opened. Men and women stepped purposefully out of their homes.

They were all solid dark people, apparelled in leather garments. They formed a ring like a noose around the rim of the circle, and stared at Covenant and Linden. Their faces were wary, hostile, shrouded. Some of them bore blunt javelins like jerrids; but no other weapons were visible.

The man with the staff joined them. Together, the ring of Stonedownors sat down cross-legged on the ground.

Only one man remained standing. He stayed behind the others, leaning against the wall of a house with his arms folded negligently across his chest. His lips wore a rapacious smile like an anticipation of bloodshed.

Covenant guessed instinctively that this man was Mithil Stonedown's executioner.

The villagers made no sound. They watched Covenant and Linden without moving, almost without blinking. Their silence was loud in the air, like the cry of a throat that had no voice.

The sun began to draw sweat from Covenant's scalp.

“Somebody say something,” he muttered through his teeth.

Abruptly, Linden nudged his arm. “That's what they're waiting for. We're on trial. They want to hear what we've got to say for ourselves.”

“Terrific.” He accepted her intuitive explanation at once; she had eyes which he lacked. “What're we on trial for?”

Grimly, she replied, “Maybe they found Nassic.”

He groaned. That made sense. Perhaps Nassic had been killed precisely so that he and Linden would be blamed for the crime. And yet-He tugged at his bonds, wishing his hands were free so that he could wipe the sweat from his face. And yet it did not explain why they had been captured in the first place.

The silence was intolerable. The mountains and the houses cupped the centre of the village like an arena. The Stonedownors sat impassively, like icons of judgment. Covenant scanned them, mustered what little dignity he possessed. Then he began to speak.

“My name is ur-Lord Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and white gold wielder. My companion is Linden Avery.” Deliberately, he gave her a title. “The Chosen. She's a stranger to the Land.” The dark people returned his gaze blankly. The man leaning against the wall bared his teeth. “But I'm no stranger,” Covenant went on in sudden anger. “You threaten me at your peril.”

“Covenant,” Linden breathed, reproving him.

“I know,” he muttered. “I shouldn't say things like that.” Then he addressed the people again. “We were welcomed by Nassic son of Jous. He wasn't a friend of yours-or you weren't friends of his, because God knows he was harmless.” Nassic had looked so lorn in death- “But he said he had a son here. A man named Sunder. Is Sunder here? Sunder?” He searched the ring. No one responded. “Sunder,” he rasped, “whoever you are-do you know your father was murdered? We found him outside his house with an iron knife in his back. The knife was still hot.”

Someone in the circle gave a low moan; but Covenant did not see who it was. Linden shook her head; she also had not seen.

The sky had become pale brown from edge to edge. The heat of the sun was as arid as dust.

“I think the killer lives here. I think he's one of you. Or don't you even care about that?”

Nobody reacted. Every face regarded him as if he were some kind of ghoul. The silence was absolute.

“Hellfire.” He turned back to Linden. “I'm just making a fool out of myself. You got any ideas?”

Her gaze wore an aspect of supplication. “I don't know-I've never been here before.”

“Neither have I.” He could not suppress his ire. “Not to a place like this. Courtesy and hospitality used to be so important here that people who couldn't provide them were ashamed.” Remembering the way Trell and Atiaran, Lena's parents, had welcomed him to their home, he ground his teeth. With a silent curse, he confronted the Stonedownors. “Are the other villages like this?” he demanded. “Is the whole Land sick with suspicion? Or is this the only place where simple decency has been forgotten?”

The man with the staff lowered his eyes. No one else moved.

“By God, if you can't at least tolerate us, let us go! We'll walk out of here, and never look back. Some other village will give us what we need.”

The man behind the circle gave a grin of malice and triumph.

“Damnation,” Covenant muttered to himself. The silence was maddening. His head was beginning to throb. The valley felt like a desert. “I wish Mhoram was here.”

Dully, Linden asked, “Who is Mhoram?” Her eyes were fixed on the standing man. He commanded her attention like an open wound.

“One of the Lords of Revelstone.” Covenant wondered what she was seeing. “Also a friend. He had a talent for dealing with impossible situations.”

She wrenched her gaze from the gloating man, glared at Covenant. Frustration and anxiety made her tone sedulous. “He's dead. All your friends are dead.” Her shoulders strained involuntarily at her bonds. “They've been dead for three thousand years. You're living in the past. How bad do things have to get before you give up thinking about the way they used to be?”

“I'm trying to understand what's happened!” Her attack shamed him. It was unjust-and yet he deserved it. Everything he said demonstrated his inadequacy. He swung away from her.

“Listen to me!” he beseeched the Stonedownors. "I've been here before-long ago, during the great war against the Grey Slayer. I fought him. So the Land could be healed. And men and women from Mithil Stonedown helped me. Your ancestors. The Land was saved by the courage of Stonedownors and Woodhelvennin and Lords and Giants and Bloodguard and Ranyhyn.

“But something's happened. There's something wrong in the Land. That's why we're here.” Remembering the old song of Kevin Landwaster, he said formally, “So that beauty and truth should not pass utterly from the Earth.”

With tone, face, posture, he begged for some kind of response, acknowledgment, from the circle. But the Stonedownors refused every appeal. His exertions had tightened the bonds on his wrists, aggravating the numbness of his hands. The sun began to raise heat-waves in the distance. He felt giddy, futile.

“I don't know what you want,” he breathed thickly. “I don't know what you think we're guilty of. But you're wrong about her.” He indicated Linden with his head. “She's never been here before. She's innocent.”

A snort of derision stopped him.

He found himself staring at the man who stood behind the circle. Their eyes came together like a clash of weapons. The man had lost his grin; he glared scorn and denunciation at Covenant. He held violence folded in the crooks of his elbows. But Covenant did not falter. He straightened his back, squared his shoulders, met the naked threat of the man's gaze.

After one taut moment, the man looked away.

Softly, Covenant said, “We're not on trial here. You are. The doom of the Land is in your hands, and you're blind to it.”

An instant of silence covered the village; the whole valley seemed to hold its breath. Then the lone man cried suddenly, “Must we hear more?” Contempt and fear collided in his tone. “He has uttered foulness enough to damn a score of strangers. Let us pass judgment now!”

At once, the man with the staff sprang to his feet. “Be still, Marid,” he said sternly. “I am the Graveller of Mithil Stonedown. The test of silence is mine to begin-and to end.”

“It is enough!” retorted Marid. “Can there be greater ill than that which he has already spoken?”

A dour crepitating of assent ran through the circle.

Linden moved closer to Covenant. Her eyes were locked to Marid as if he appalled her. Nausea twisted her mouth. Covenant looked at her, at Marid, trying to guess what lay between them.

“Very well.” The Graveller took a step forward. “It is enough.” He planted his staff on the stone. “Stonedownors, speak what you have heard.”

For a moment, the people were still. Then an old man rose slowly to his feet. He adjusted his jerkin, pulled his gravity about him. “I have heard the Rede of the na-Mhoram, as it is spoken by the Riders of the Clave. They have said that the coming of the man with the halfhand and the white ring bodes unending ruin for us all. They have said that it is better to slay such a man in his slumber, allowing the blood to fall wasted to the earth, than to permit him one free breath with which to utter evil. Only the ring must be preserved, and given to the Riders, so that all blasphemy may be averted from the Land.”

Blasphemy? Clave? Covenant grappled uselessly with his incomprehension. Who besides Nassic's Unfettered ancestor had foretold the return of the Unbeliever?

The old man concluded with a nod to the Graveller. Opposite him, a middle-aged woman stood. Jabbing her hand toward Covenant, she said, “He spoke the name of the na-Mhoram as a friend. Are not the na-Mhoram and all his Gave bitter to Mithil Stonedown? Do not his Riders reave us of blood-and not of the old whose deaths are nigh, but of the young whose lives are precious? Let these two die! Our herd has already suffered long days without forage.”

“Folly!” the old man replied. “You will not speak so when next the Rider comes. It will be soon-our time nears again. In all the Land only the Clave has power over the Sunbane. The burden of their sacrificing is heavy to us-but we would lack life altogether if they failed to spend the blood of the villages.”

“Yet is there not a contradiction here?” the Graveller interposed. “He names the na-Mhoram as friend-and yet the most dire Rede of the Clave speaks against him,”

“For both they must die!” Marid spat immediately. “The na-Mhoram is not our friend, but his power is sure.”

“True!” voices said around the ring.

“Yes.”

“True.”

Linden brushed Covenant with her shoulder. “That man,” she whispered. “Marid. There's something-Do you see it?”

“No,” responded Covenant through his teeth. “I told you I can't. What is it?”

“I don't know.” She sounded frightened. “Something-”

Then another woman stood. “He seeks to be released so that he may go to another Stonedown. Are not all other villages our foes? Twice has Windshorn Stonedown raided our fields during the fertile sun, so that our bellies shrank and our children cried in the night. Let the friends of our foes die.”

Again the Stonedownors growled, “Yes.”

“True.”

Without warning, Marid shouted over the grumble of voices, “They slew Nassic father of Sunder! Are we a people to permit murder unavenged? They must die!”

“No!” Linden's instantaneous denial cracked across the circle like a scourge. “We did not kill that harmless old man!”

Covenant whirled to her. But she did not notice him; her attention was consumed by Marid.

In a tone of acid mockery, the man asked, “Do you fear to die, Linden Avery the Chosen?”

“What is it?” she gritted back at him. “What are you?”

“What do you see?” Covenant urged. “Tell me”

“Something-” Her voice groped; but her stare did not waver. Perspiration had darkened her hair along the line of her forehead. “It's like that storm. Something evil.”

Intuitions flared like spots of sun-blindness across Covenant's mind. “Something hot.”

“Yes!” Her gaze accused Marid fiercely. “Like the knife.”

Covenant spun, confronted Marid. He was suddenly calm. “You,” he said. “Marid. Come here.”

“No, Marid,” commanded the Graveller.

“Hell and blood!” Covenant rasped like deliberate ice. “My hands are tied. Are you afraid to find out the truth?” He did not glance at the Graveller; he held Marid with his will. “Come here. I'll show you who killed Nassic.”

“Watch out,” Linden whispered. “He wants to hurt you.”

Scorn twisted Marid's face. For a moment, he did not move. But now all the eyes of the Stonedown were on him, watching his reaction. And Covenant gave him no release. A spasm of fear or glee tightened Marid's expression. Abruptly, he strode forward, halted in front of Covenant and the Graveller. “Speak your lies,” he sneered. “You will choke upon them before you die.”

Covenant did not hesitate. “Nassic was stabbed in the back,” he said softly, “with an iron knife. It was a lousy job-he bled to death. When we left him, the knife was still hot.”

Marid swallowed convulsively. “You are a fool. What man or woman of Mithil Stonedown could wield a knife with the fire yet within it? Out of your own mouth you are condemned.”

“Graveller,” Covenant said, “touch him with your staff.”

Around him, the Stonedownors rose to their feet.

“For what purpose?” the Graveller asked uncertainly. “It is mere wood. It has no virtue to determine guilt or innocence.”

Covenant clinched Marid in his gaze. “Do it.”

Hesitantly, the Graveller obeyed.

As the tip of the staff neared him, Marid shied. But then a savage exaltation lit his face, and he remained still.

The staff touched his shoulder.

Instantly, the wood burst into red fire.

The Graveller recoiled in astonishment. Stonedownors gasped, gripped each other for reassurance.

With an explosive movement, Marid backhanded Covenant across the side of his head.

The unnatural power of the blow catapulted Covenant backward. He tumbled heavily to the ground. Pain like acid burned through his sore skull.

“Covenant!” Linden cried fearfully.

He heard the Graveller protest, “Marid!”-heard the fright of the Stonedownors turn to anger. Then the pain became a roaring that deafened him. For a moment, he was too dizzy to move. But he fought the fire, heaved himself to his knees so that everyone could see the mark of Marid's blow among his bruises. “Nice work, you bastard,” he rasped. His voice seemed to make no sound. “What were you afraid of? Did you think he was going to help us that much? Or were you just having fun?”

He was aware of a low buzzing around him, but could not make out words. Marid stood with arms across his chest, grinning.

Covenant thrust his voice through the roar. “Why don't you tell us your real name? Is it Herem? Jehannum? Maybe Sheol?”

Linden was beside him. She strove fervidly to free her hands; but the bonds held. Her mouth chewed dumb curses.

“Come on,” he continued, though he could barely see Marid beyond the pain. “Attack me. Take your chances. Maybe I've forgotten how to use it.”

Abruptly, Marid began to laugh: laughter as gelid as hate. It penetrated Covenant's hearing, resounded in his head like a concussion. “It will avail you nothing!” he shouted. “Your death is certain! You cannot harm me!”

The Graveller brandished his flaming staff at Marid. Dimly, Covenant heard the man rage, “Have you slain Nassic my father?”

“With joy!” laughed the Raver. “Ah, how it fed me to plant my blade in his back!”

A woman shrieked. Before anyone could stop her, she sped in a blur of grey hair across the open space, hurled herself at Marid.

He collapsed as if the impact had killed him.

Covenant's strength gave out. He fell to his back, lay panting heavily on the stone.

Then a stench of burned flesh sickened the air. One of the Stonedownors cried out, “Sunder! Her hands!”

Another demanded, “Is he slain?”

“No!” came the reply.

Linden was yelling. “Let me go! I'm a doctor! I can help her!” She sounded frantic. “Don't you know what a doctor is?”

A moment later, hands gripped Covenant's arms, lifted him to his feet. A Stonedownor swam toward him through the hurt; slowly, the face resolved, became the Graveller. His brow was a knot of anger and grief. Stiffly, he said, “Marid sleeps. My mother is deeply burned. Tell me the meaning of this.”

“A Raver.” Covenant's breathing shuddered in his lungs. “Bloody hell.” He could not think or find the words he needed.

The Graveller bunched his fists in Covenant's shirt. “Speak!”

From somewhere nearby, Linden shouted, “Goddamn it, leave him alone! Can't you see he's hurt?”

Covenant fought for clarity. “Let her go,” he said to the Graveller. “She's a healer.”

The muscles along the Graveller's jaw knotted, released. “I have not been given reason to trust her. Speak to me of Marid.”

Marid, Covenant panted. “Listen.” Sweating and dizzy, he squeezed the pain out of his mind. “It was a Raver.”

The Graveller's glare revealed no comprehension.

“When he wakes up, he'll probably be normal again. May not even remember what happened. He was taken over. That Raver could be anywhere. It isn't hurt. You need a lot of power to knock one of them out, even temporarily. You've got to watch for it. It could take over anybody. Watch for somebody who starts acting strange. Violent. Stay away from them. I mean it.”

The Graveller listened first with urgency, then with disgust. Exasperation pulsed in the veins of his temples. Before Covenant finished, the Stonedownor turned on his heel, strode away.

Immediately, the hands holding Covenant's arms dragged him out of the centre of the village.

Linden was ahead of him. She struggled uselessly between two burly men. They impelled her back into their jail.

“Damnation,” Covenant said. His voice had no force. “I'm trying to warn you.”

His captors did not respond. They thrust him into the hut after Linden, and let him fall.

He sank to the floor. The cool dimness of the room washed over him. The suddenness of his release from the sun's brown pressure made the floor wheel. But he rested his pain on the soothing stone; and gradually that quiet touch steadied him.

Linden was cursing bitterly in the stillness. He tried to raise his head. “Linden.”

At once, she moved to his side. “Don't try to get up. Just let me see it.”

He turned his head to show her his hurt.

She bent over him. He could feel her breath on his cheek. “You're burned, but it doesn't look serious. First-degree.” Her tone twitched with nausea and helplessness. “None of the bones are cracked. How do you feel?”

“Dizzy,” he murmured. “Deaf. I'll be all right.”

“Sure you will,” she grated. “You probably have a concussion. I'll bet you want to go to sleep.”

He mumbled assent. The darkness in his head offered him cool peace, and he longed to let himself drown in it.

She took a breath through her teeth. “Sit up.”

He did not move; he lacked the strength to obey her.

She nudged him with her knee. “I'm serious. If you go to sleep, you might drift into a coma, and I won't be able to do anything about it. You've got to stay awake. Sit up.”

The ragged edge in her voice sounded like a threat of hysteria. Gritting his teeth, he tried to rise. Hot pain flayed the bones of his head; but he pried himself erect, then slumped to the side so that his shoulder was braced against the wall.

“Good,” Linden sighed. The pounding in his skull formed a gulf between them. She seemed small and lonely, aggrieved by the loss of the world she understood. “Now try to stay alert. Talk to me.” After a moment, she said, “Tell me what happened.”

He recognized her need. Marid incarnated the fears which Nassic's death had raised for her. A being who lived on hate, relished violence and anguish. She knew nothing about such things.

“A Raver.” Covenant tried to slip his voice quietly past the pain. “I should have known. Marid is just a Stonedownor. He was possessed by a Raver.”

Linden backed away from him, composed herself against the opposite wall. Her gaze held his face. “What's a Raver?”

“Servant of Foul.” He closed his eyes, leaned his head to the stone, so that he could concentrate on what he was saying. “There are three of them. Herem, Sheol, Jehannum-they have a lot of different names. They don't have bodies of their own, so they take over other people-even animals, I guess. Whatever they can find. So they're always in disguise.” He sighed-gently, to minimize the effect on his head. “I just hope these people understand what that means.”

“So,” she asked carefully, “what I saw was the Raver inside Marid? That's why he looked so-so wrong?”

“Yes.” When he focused on her voice, his hurt became less demanding; it grew hotter, but also more specific and limited. As a fire in his skin rather than a cudgel in his brain, it crippled his thinking less. “Marid was just a victim. The Raver used him to kill Nassic-set us up for this. What I don't know is why. Does Foul want us killed here? Or is there something else going on? If Foul wants us dead, that Raver made a big mistake when it let itself get caught. Now the Stonedown has something besides us to think about.”

“What I don't know,” Linden said in a lorn voice like an appeal, “is how I was able to see it. None of this is possible.”

Her tone sparked unexpected memories. Suddenly, he realized that the way she had stared at Marid was the same way she had regarded Joan. That encounter with Joan had shaken her visibly.

He opened his eyes, watched her as he said, “That's one of the few things that seems natural to me. I used to be able to see what you're seeing now-the other times I was here.” Her face was turned toward him, but she was not looking at him. Her attention was bent inward as she struggled with the lunacy of her predicament. “Your senses,” he went on, trying to help her, “are becoming attuned to the Land. You're becoming sensitive to the physical spirit around you. More and more, you're going to look at something, or hear it, or touch it, and be able to tell whether it's sick or healthy-natural or unnatural.” She did not appear to hear him. Defying his pain, he rasped, “Which isn't happening to me.” He wanted to pull her out of herself before she lost her way. “For all I can see, I might as well be blind.”

Her head flinched from side to side. “What if I'm wrong?” she breathed miserably. “What if I'm losing my mind?”

“No! That part of you is never going to be wrong. And you can't lose your mind unless you let it happen.” Wildness knuckled her features. "Don't give up."

She heard him. With an effort that wrung his heart, she compelled her body to relax, muscle by muscle. She drew a breath that trembled; but when she exhaled, she was calmer. “I just feel so helpless.”

He said nothing, waited for her.

After a moment, she sniffed sharply, shook her hair away from her face, met his gaze. “If these Ravers can possess anybody,” she said, “why not us? If we're so important-if this Lord Foul is what you say he is-why doesn't he just make us into Ravers, and get it over with?”

With a silent groan of relief, Covenant allowed himself to sag. “That's the one thing he can't do. He can't afford it. He'll manipulate us every way he can, but he has to accept the risk that we won't do what he wants. He needs our freedom. What he wants from us won't have any value if we don't do it by choice.” Also, he went on to himself, Foul doesn't dare let a Raver get my ring. How could he trust one of them with that much power?

Linden frowned. “That might make sense-if I understood what makes us so important. What we've got that he could possibly want. But never mind that now.” She took a deep breath. “If I could see the Raver-why couldn't anybody else?”

Her question panged Covenant. “That's what really scares me,” he said tautly. “These people used to be like you. Now they aren't.” And I'm not. “I'm afraid even to think about what that means. They've lost-” Lost the insight which taught them to love and serve the Land-to care about it above everything else. Oh, Foul, you bastard, what have you done? “If they can't see the difference between a Raver and a normal man, then they won't be able to see that they should trust us.”

Her mouth tightened. “You mean they're still planning to kill us?”

Before Covenant could reply, the curtain was thrust aside, and the Graveller entered the room.

His eyes were glazed with trouble, and his brow wore a scowl of involition and mourning, as if his essential gentleness had been harmed. He had left his staff behind; his hands hung at his sides. But he could not keep them still. They moved in slight jerks, half gestures, as if they sought unconsciously for something he could hold onto.

After a moment of awkwardness, he sat down on his heels near the entryway. He did not look at his prisoners; his gaze lay on the floor between them.

“Sunder,” Covenant said softly, “son of Nassic.”

The Graveller nodded without raising his eyes.

Covenant waited for him to speak. But the Graveller remained silent, as if he were abashed. After a moment, Covenant said, “That woman who attacked Marid. She was your mother.”

“Kalina Nassic-mate, daughter of Alloma.” He held himself harshly quiet. “My mother.”

Linden peered intently at Sunder. “How is she?”

“She rests. But her injury is deep. We have little healing for such hurts. It may be that she will be sacrificed.”

Covenant saw Linden poised to demand to be allowed to help the woman. But he forestalled her. “Sacrificed?”

“Her blood belongs to the Stonedown.” Sunder's voice limped under a weight of pain. “It must not be wasted. Only Nassic my father would not have accepted this. Therefore”- his throat knotted — “it is well he knew not that I am the Graveller of Mithil Stonedown. For it is I who will shed the sacrifice.”

Linden recoiled. Aghast, Covenant exclaimed, “You're going to sacrifice your own mother?”

“For the survival of the Stonedown!” croaked Sunder. “We must have blood.” Then he clamped down his emotion. “You also will be sacrificed. The Stonedown has made its judgment. You will be shed at the rising of the morrow's sun.”

Covenant glared at the Graveller. Ignoring the throb in his head, he rasped, “Why?”

“I have come to make answer.” Sunder's tone and his downcast eyes reproved Covenant. The Graveller plainly loathed his responsibility; yet he did not shirk it. “The reasons are many. You have asked to be released so that you may approach another village.”

“I'm looking for friends,” Covenant countered stiffly. “If I can't find them here, I'll try somewhere else.”

“No.” The Graveller was certain. “Another Stonedown would do as we do. Because you came to them from Mithil Stonedown, they would sacrifice you. In addition,” he continued, “you have spoken friendship for the na-Mhoram, who reaves us of blood.”

Covenant blinked at Sunder. These accusations formed a pattern he could not decipher. “I don't know any na-Mhoram. The Mhoram I knew has been dead for at least three thousand years.”

“That is not possible.” Sunder spoke without raising his head. “You have no more than twoscore 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 Grey Slayer. Do you mean to tell me that's been forgotten? Nobody remembers the story?”

The Graveller 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 Graveller'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 them gingerly. “All right,” he said. “Let that pass. How is killing us going to help you?”

“I am the Graveller. 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 Graveller. “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 Graveller 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 Graveller.” 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 Graveller 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 Graveller. “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 Graveller. “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 Graveller, 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 Graveller'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 collared 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.

There to his great ire he saw that evil lay in the Earth: malice buried and abroad, banes and powers which had no part in his intent. For while he had laboured over his creation, he had closed his eyes, and had not seen the Despiser, the bitter son or brother of his heart, labouring beside him-casting dross into the forge, adding malignancy to his intent.

Then the Creator's wrath shook the heavens, and he grappled with the son or brother of his heart. He overthrew the Despiser and hurled him to the Earth, sealing him within the Arch of Time for his punishment. Thus it became for the inhabitants of the Earth as it was with the Creator; for in that act he harmed the tiling he loved, and so all living hearts were taught the power of self-despite. The Despiser was abroad in the Earth, awakening ills, seeking to escape his prison. And the Creator could not hinder him, for the reach of any immortal hand through the Arch would topple Time, destroying the Earth and freeing the Despiser. This was the great grief of the Creator, and the unending flaw and sorrow of those who lived and strove upon the Earth.

Covenant fell silent. Telling this story, essentially as he had heard it ten years ago, brought back many things to him. He no longer felt blurred and ossified. Now he felt like the night, and his memories were stars: Mhoram, Foamfollower, Banner, the Ranyhyn. While he still had blood in his veins, air in his lungs, he would not turn his back on the world which had given birth to such people.

Linden started to ask a question; but the rustling of the curtain interrupted her. Sunder entered the room carrying an oil lamp. He set it on the floor and seated himself cross-legged in front of it. Its dim, yellow light cast haggard shadows across his visage. When he spoke, his voice wore ashes, as if he had been bereaved.

“I, too, have heard that tale,” he said thickly. “It was told to me by Nassic my father. But the tale told in the Rede of the na-Mhoram is another altogether.”

Covenant and Linden waited. After a moment, the Graveller went on. “In the Rede it is told that the Earth was formed as a jail and tormenting-place for the Lord of wickedness-him whom we name a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells. And life was placed upon the Earth-men and women, and all other races-to wreak upon a-Jeroth his proper doom. But time and again, throughout the ages, the races of the Land failed their purpose. Rather than exacting pain from a-Jeroth, meting out upon him the Master's just retribution, they formed alliances with the Lord, spared him in his weakness and bowed to him in his strength. And always”- Sunder shot a glance at Covenant, faltered momentarily — "the most heinous of these betrayals have been wrought by men born in the image of the First Betrayer, Berek, father of cowardice. Halfhanded men.

“Therefore in his wrath the Master turned his face from the Land. He sent the Sunbane upon us, as chastisement for treachery, so that we would remember our mortality, and become worthy again to serve his purpose. Only the intercession of the Clave enables us to endure.”

Protests thronged in Covenant. He knew from experience that this conception of the Land was false and cruel. But before he could try to reply, Linden climbed suddenly to her feet. Her eyes were feverish in the lamplight, afflicted by fear and outrage and waiting. Her lips trembled. “A Master like that isn't worth believing in. But you probably have to do it anyway. How else can you justify killing people you don't even know?”

The Graveller surged erect, faced her extremely. The conflict in him made him grind his teeth. “All the Land knows the truth which the Clave teaches. It is manifest at every rising of the sun. None deny it but Nassic my father, who died in mind before his body was slain, and you, who are ignorant!”

Covenant remained on the floor. While Linden and Sunder confronted each other, he drew all the strands of himself together, braided anger, empathy, determination, memory to make the cord on which all their lives depended. Part of him bled to think of the hurt he meant to inflict on Sunder, the choice he meant to extort; part raged at the brutality which had taught people like Sunder to think of their own lives as punishment for a crime they could not have committed; part quavered in fear at the idea of failure, at the poverty of his grasp on power. When Linden began to retort to the Graveller, he stopped her with, a wrench of his head. I'll do it, he thought silently to her. If it has to be done. Shifting his gaze to Sunder, he asked, “How's your mother?”

A spasm contorted the Graveller's face; his hands bunched into knots of pain and uselessness, “Her death is plain.” His eyes were dull, wounded, articulating the frank torment of his heart. “I must shed her blood with yours at the sun's rising.”

Covenant bowed his head for a moment in tacit acknowledgment. Then, deliberately, he created a space of clarity within himself, set his questions and fears aside. All right, he murmured. Leper. It has to be done.

Taking a deep breath, he rose to his feet, faced the Stonedownor.

“Sunder,” he said softly, “do you have a knife?”

The Graveller nodded as if the question had no meaning.

“Take it out.”

Slowly, Sunder obeyed. He reached to his back, slipped a long iron poniard out of his belt. His fingers held it as if they had no idea how to use it.

“I want you to see that you're safe,” Covenant said. “You have a knife. My hands are tied. I can't hurt you.”

Sunder stared back at Covenant, transfixed by incomprehension.

All right, Covenant breathed. Leper. Do it now. His heartbeat seemed to fill his chest, leaving no room for air. But he did not waver.

“Get out that piece of orcrest. The Sunstone.”

Again, Sunder obeyed. Covenant's will held him.

Covenant did not permit himself to glance down at the stone. He was marginally aware that Linden regarded him as if he were no longer sane. A shudder of apprehension threatened his clarity. He had to grit his teeth to keep his voice steady, “Touch me with it.”

“Touch-?” Sunder murmured blankly.

“Touch my forehead.”

Doubt pinched the corners of Sunder's eyes. His shoulders hunched as he tightened his grip on the knife, the Sunstone.

Do it.

The Graveller's hand seemed to move without volition. The orcrest passed Covenant's face, came to rest cool and possible against his tense brow.

His attention dropped through him to his ring, seeking for the link between orcrest and white gold. He remembered standing in sunlight and desperation on the slopes of Mount Thunder; he saw Bannor take his hand, place his ring in contact with the Staff of Law. A trigger. He felt the detonation of power.

You are the white gold.

The silence in the room vibrated. His lips stretched back from his teeth. He squeezed his eyes shut against the strain.

A trigger.

He did not want to die, did not want the Land to die. Lord Foul abhorred all life.

Fiercely, he brought the orcrest and the white gold together in his mind, chose power.

A burst of argent sprang off his forehead.

Linden let out a stricken gasp. Sunder snatched back the orcrest. A gust of force blew out the lamp.

Then Covenant's hands were free. Ignoring the sudden magma of renewed circulation, he raised his arms in front of him., opened his eyes.

His hands blazed the colour of the full moon. He could feel the passion of the fire, but it did him no harm.

The flames on his left swiftly faded, died. But his right hand grew brighter as the blaze focused on his ring, burning without a sound.

Linden stared at him whitely, wildly. Sunder's eyes echoed the argent fire like a revelation too acute to bear.

You are stubborn yet. Yes! Covenant panted. You don't begin to know how stubborn.

With a thought, he struck the bonds from Linden's wrists. Then he reached for the Sunstone.

As he took it from Sunder's stunned fingers, a piercing white light exploded from the stone. It shone like a sun in the small room. Linden ducked her head. Sunder covered his eyes with his free arm, waved his poniard uncertainly.

“Wild magic,” Covenant said. His voice felt like flame in his mouth. The return of blood to his arms raked his nerves like claws. “Your knife means nothing. I have the wild magic. I'm not threatening you. I don't want to hurt anybody.” The night had become cold, yet sweat streamed down his face. “That's not why I'm here. But I won't let you kill us.”

“Father!” Sunder cried in dismay. “Was it true? Was every, word that you spoke a word of truth?”

Covenant sagged. He felt that he had accomplished his purpose; and at once a wave of fatigue broke through him. “Here.” His voice was hoarse with strain. “Take it.”

“Take-?”

“The Sunstone. It's yours.”

Torn by this vision of power as if it turned the world he had always known to chaos, Sunder stretched out his hand, touched the bright orcrest. When its light did not burn him, he closed his fingers on it as if it were an anchor.

With a groan, Covenant released the wild magic. Instantly, the fire went out as if he had severed it from his hand. The Sunstone was extinguished; the room plunged into midnight.

He leaned back against the wall, hugged his pounding arms across his chest. Flares danced along his sight, turning slowly from white to orange and red. He felt exhausted; but he could not rest. He had silenced his power so that the Graveller would have a chance to refuse him. Now he had to meet the cost of his risk. Roughly, he forced out words. "I want to get away from here. Before anything else happens. Before that Raver tries something worse. But we need help. A guide. Somebody who knows the Sunbane. We can't survive alone. I want you."

From out of the darkness, Sunder answered as if he were foundering, “I am the Graveller of Mithil Stonedown. My people hold me in their faith. How shall I betray my home to aid you?”

“Sunder,” Covenant replied, striving to convey the extremity of his conviction, “I want to help the Land. I want to save it all. Including Mithil Stonedown.”

For a long moment, the Graveller was silent. Covenant clinched his chest, did not allow himself to beg for Sunder's aid; but his heart beat over and over again, Please; I need you.

Abruptly, Linden spoke in a tone of startling passion. “You shouldn't have to kill your own mother.”

Sunder took a deep quivering breath. “I do not wish to shed her blood. Or yours. May my people forgive me.”

Covenant's head swam with relief. He hardly heard himself say, “Then let's get started.”

Seven: Marid

FOR a moment, there was silence in the small room. Sunder remained still, as if he could not force his reluctant bones to act on his decision. Out of the darkness, he breathed thickly, “Thomas Covenant, do not betray me.”

Before Covenant could try to reply, the Graveller turned, eased the curtain aside.

Through the entryway, Covenant saw moonlight in the open centre of the Stonedown. Quietly, he asked, “What about guards?”

“There are none here.” Sunder's voice was a rigid whisper. “Lives to be shed are left in the charge of the Graveller. It is fitting that one who will commit sacrifice should keep vigil with those whose blood will be shed. The Stonedown sleeps.”

Covenant clenched himself against his fatigue and the Graveller's tone. “What about outside the village?”

“Those guards we must evade.”

Grimly, Sunder slipped out of the room.

Linden began to follow the Stonedownor. But at Covenant's side she stopped, said softly, “Do you trust him? He already regrets this.”

“I know,” Covenant responded. In the back of his mind, he cursed the acuity of her hearing. “I wouldn't trust anybody who didn't regret a decision like this.”

She hesitated for a moment. She said bitterly, “I don't think regret is such a virtue.” Then she let herself out into the night.

He stood still, blinking wearily at the dark. He felt wan with hunger; and the thought of what lay ahead sapped the little strength remaining to him. Linden's severity hurt him. Where had she learned to deny herself the simple humanity of regret?

But he had no time for such things. His need to escape was absolute. Woodenly, he followed his companions out of the room.

After the blackness behind him, the moon seemed bright. Sunder and Linden were distinct and vulnerable against the pale walls of the houses, waiting for him. When he joined them, the Graveller turned northward immediately, began moving with barefoot silence between the dwellings. Linden shadowed him; and Covenant stayed within arm's reach of her back.

As they neared the outer houses, Sunder stopped. He signed for Covenant and Linden to remain where they were. When Covenant nodded, Sunder crept away back into the Stonedown.

Covenant tried to muffle his respiration. At his side, Linden stood with her fists clenched. Her lips moved soundlessly as if she were arguing with her fear. The night was chilly; Covenant's anxiety left a cold trail down the small of his back.

Shortly, Sunder returned, bearing a dark oblong the size of a papaya. “Mirkfruit,” he whispered. At once, he moved off again.

Like spectres, the three of them left Mithil Stonedown.

From the last houses, Sunder picked his way toward the valley bottom. He travelled in a hah5 crouch, reducing his silhouette as much as possible. Linden followed his example; she seemed to flit through the moonlight as if she had been born sure-footed. But

Covenant's toes were numb, and his legs were tired. He stumbled over the uneven ground.

Abruptly, Sunder braced his hands on a rock, vaulted down into the long hollow of the riverbed.

Linden jumped after him. Sand absorbed her landing. Swiftly, she joined Sunder in the shadow under the bank.

Covenant hesitated on the edge. Looking downward, he became suddenly queasy with vertigo. He turned his head away. The barren length of the watercourse stretched serpentine out of the mountains on his left toward the South Plains on his right.

Last night, the Mithil River had been full to overflowing.

“Come!” whispered Sunder. “You will be seen.”

Covenant jumped. He landed crookedly, sprawled in the sand. In an instant, Sunder reached his side, urged him to his feet. He ignored the Graveller. He dug his hands into the sand, groping for moisture. But even below the surface, the sand was completely dry. His hands raised dust that made him gag to stifle a cough.

Impossible!

The riverbed was as desiccated as a desert. Had the Law itself become meaningless?

“Covenant!” Linden hissed.

Sunder tugged at his shoulders. Fighting down a rush of blind rage, Covenant pulled his legs under him, stumbled into the shadow of the bank. A moment passed before he regained himself enough to look outward, away from his dismay.

Sunder pointed downriver, toward the black arc of a bridge a few hundred feet away. “One guard,” he breathed. “The others can no longer descry us. But him we cannot pass unseen.”

“What are we going to do?” whispered Linden.

The Graveller motioned for silence. Hefting his mirkfruit, he crept away along the course, staying carefully under the shelter of the bank.

Linden and Covenant followed.

Their progress was slow. The river bottom was littered with rocks and unexpected holes, especially near the banks; Covenant had to watch his footing. Yet his gaze was drawn toward the bridge-the ominous black span blocking their way like a gate. He had crossed that bridge with Lena. And with Atiaran. The memory made his heart squirm.

He caught no glimpse of the guard. The man must have been hiding behind the parapets of the span.

Then they drew near the bridge, made their way under it. Covenant held his breath as Sunder moved to the riverbank. The Graveller climbed with acute caution; he eased his way upward as if every pebble and handful of dirt were treacherous. Slowly, he disappeared around the base of the bridge.

Suspense shivered in the air as if the night were about to shatter. Covenant's lungs knotted, demanding relief. Linden huddled into herself.

They heard a soft thud-the impact of Sunder's mirkfruit- followed by a groan, and the sound of a body falling on the stone over their heads.

The Graveller dropped with alacrity back into the riverbed. “Now we must make haste,” he warned, “before another comes to ward in his place.” He sounded angry. Turning on his heel, he strode away as if what he had just done to someone he had known all his life were unsupportable.

He set a stiff pace. Covenant and Linden had to hurry to keep up with him.

Moonlight gave the night a crisp patina of old silver, as if the darkness itself were a work of fine-spun craft. Stars winked like instances of perfection above the rims of the mountains, which rose rugged into the unattainable heavens on either side. While his strength held, Covenant took pleasure in this opportunity to recover the tangible loveliness of the Land.

But as the moon declined toward setting, and the spur of mountains on his left began to shrink, his momentum faltered. He was too weak. His heart limped as if it could not keep up with him; his muscles felt like sand. And escape was not enough; there was something else he had to do as well. With a dry croak, he called Sunder to a halt. Then he dropped to the ground, stretched out on his back, and sucked air.

Linden stopped nearby, winded but still capable. And Sunder stood erect and impatient; he was tough as well as strong, inured to fatigue by a lifetime of difficult survival. The little he had seen and heard had taught Covenant that life in Mithil Stonedown was arduous and costly. Why else were these villagers willing to sacrifice their own parents-willing to condemn strangers and innocents to death? It was intolerable, that the bountiful Land he loved had come to this.

He was still hunting fortitude when Sunder said stiffly, “Here we are safe enough until the sun's rising-at least while our absence remains undiscovered in the Stonedown. But it avails nothing merely to abide here, awaiting chance or doom. The Rider who approaches Mithil Stonedown may come upon us. He will surely pursue when he is told of our flight. You have asked me to guide you. Thomas Covenant, where will you go?”

Groaning, Covenant pried himself into a sitting position. “First things first.” He had learned enough to be sure Sunder would not like the larger answer to that question. So he concentrated on his immediate purpose. “First I want to find Marid.”

“Marid?” The Graveller gaped. “Did I not tell you the judgment of the Stonedown? He is condemned by ancient Rede and custom to the mercy of the Sunbane. It has already been done.”

“I know,” Covenant muttered. “You told me. And I told you. He's innocent.”

“Guilt or innocence,” retorted Sunder, “it avails nothing. It has already been done! The men and women entrusted with his doom returned before I came to speak with you.”

Weariness eroded Covenant's self-mastery. He could hardly restrain his old rage. “What exactly did they do to him?”

Sunder cast a look of exasperation at the stars. “They bore him into the Plains, and left him hound to await his judgment.”

“Do you know where they left him?”

“Somewhat. They spoke of their intent before departing. I was not among them to behold the very spot.”

“That's good enough.” Covenant felt as weak as water; but he climbed to his feet and faced the Graveller. “Take us there.”

“There is not time!” Sunder's visage was a tangle of darkness. “The distance is too great. We must find protection, lest we also fall prey to the sun's rising.”

“But Marid is innocent.” Covenant sounded wild to himself, but did not care. “The only reason that Raver used him was because of us. I'm not going to let him be punished. Goddamn it.” He grabbed roughly at Sunder's jerkin. “Guide us! I've got too much blood on my hands already.”

In a low strained tone, as if he had just glimpsed some crucial and frightening truth, the Graveller said, “You do not understand the Sunbane.”

“Then explain it. What are you so afraid of?”

“We will suffer Marid's doom!”

From behind Sunder, Linden said, “He means it. He thinks something awful is going to happen when the sun comes up.”

With an effort, Covenant forced himself to release Sunder. He faced Linden, bit down on his voice to keep it quiet. “What do you think?”

She was silent for a moment. Then she said harshly, “I didn't believe you when you said Joan was possessed. But I saw that Raver myself. I saw Marid afterward. The Raver was gone.” She carved each word distinctly in the night air. “If you want to stay with Sunder, I'll go looking for Marid myself.”

“Heaven and Earth!” protested Sunder. “Did I betray my home merely so that you may meet ruin for a man you cannot save? If you place one foot amiss, you will end in beseeching the stones themselves for death!”

Covenant gazed into the darkness where Linden stood, gathering strength from her. Softly, he replied to Sunder, “He was your friend.”

“You are mad!” Sunder raged. “Nassic my father was mad!” He snatched up a stone, hurled it against the riverbank. “I am mad.” Then he whirled on Covenant. Anger hammered in his voice. “Very well. I will guide you. But I will not”- his fist hit at the night — “suffer the destruction of the Sunbane for any man or woman, mad or sane,”

Wrenching himself into motion, he turned and scrambled up out of the riverbed.

Covenant remained looking toward Linden. He wanted to thank her for her support, her willingness to risk herself in the name of Marid's innocence. But she brushed past him after Sunder. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder. “We've got to hurry. Whatever it is he's afraid of, I don't think I'm going to like it.”

He watched her while she climbed the bank. End in beseeching — He rubbed his right hand across his chin, verified his ring against the stiff stubble of his beard. Then he marshalled his waning resources and struggled to follow his companions.

On level ground, he found himself in an entirely different landscape. Except for the ragged weal of the Mithil, the Plains were nearly featureless. They spread north and west as far as he could see, marked only by the faint undulations of the terrain-bare even of shrubs or piles of rock. The low moonlight gave them an appearance of ghostly sterility, as if they had been weathered barren by ages of implacable thirst.

Sunder headed slightly east of north at a canter, roughly paralleling the mountains which still lay to the east. But Covenant could not endure such a pace. And he did not understand his guide's compelling dread. He called for Sunder to slow down.

The Graveller spun on his heel. “There is not time.”

“Then there's no reason for us to wear ourselves out.”

Sunder spat a curse, started moving again. But in spite of his almost frantic anxiety, he went no faster than a brisk walk.

Some time later, the moon fell below the horizon. But the scant light of the stars sufficed. The terrain was not difficult, and Sunder knew his way. Soon a vague wash of grey from the east began to macerate the night.

The paling of the horizon agitated Sunder. He searched the earth near him while he walked, made digressions from his path like spurts of fright to study irregularities in the ground. But he ' could not find what he wanted. Within half a league, dawn had become imminent. Urgently, he faced Covenant and Linden. ”We must find stone. Any hard rock free of soil. Before the sun's rising. Search, if you value a hale life and a clean death."

Covenant halted woodenly. His surroundings seemed to sway as if they were about to fall apart. He felt stunned by weariness.

“There,” Linden said. She was pointing off to her right.

He peered in that direction. He could discern nothing. But he did not have her eyes.

Sunder gaped at her for a moment, then hastened to investigate. With his hands, he explored the surface.

“Stone!” he hissed. “It may suffice.” At once, he jumped erect. “We must stand here. The stone will ward us.”

Fatigue blurred Covenant's sight. He could not see the Graveller clearly. Sunder's apprehension made no sense to him. Sunrise was only moments away; luminescence cast the horizon into stark relief. Was he supposed to be afraid of the sun?

Linden asked Sunder the same question. “Do you think the sun's going to hurt us? That's nonsense. We spent half the morning yesterday in that test of silence of yours, and the only thing we suffered from was prejudice.”

“With stone underfoot!” fumed the Graveller. “It is the first touch which destroys! You did not meet the first touch of the Sunbane unwarded by stone!”

I don't have time for this, Covenant muttered to himself. The eyes of his mind saw Marid clearly enough. Left to die in the sun. Unsteadily, he lurched into motion again.

“Fool!” Sunder shouted. “For you I betrayed my born people!”

A moment later, Linden joined Covenant.

“Find stone!” The Graveller's passion sounded like raw despair. “You destroy me! Must I slay you also?”

Linden was silent for a few steps. Then she murmured, “He believes it.”

An innominate pang ran through Covenant. Involuntarily, he stopped. He and Linden turned to face the east.

They squinted at the first fiery rim of the rising sun.

It flared red along the skyline; but the sun itself wore an aura of brown, as if it shone through cerements of dust. It touched his face with dry heat.

“Nothing,” Linden said tightly. “I don't feel anything.”

He glanced back at Sunder. The Graveller stood on his stone. His hands had covered his face, and his shoulders shook.

Because he did not know what else to do, Covenant turned away, went rigidly in search of Marid.

Linden stayed with him. Hunger had abused her face, giving her a sunken aspect; and she carried her head as if the injury behind her ear still hurt. But her jaw was set, emphasizing the firm lines of her chin, and her lips were pale with severity. She looked like a woman who did not know how to fail. He braced himself on her determination, and kept moving.

The rising of the sun had altered the ambience of the Plains. They had been silver and bearable; now they became a hot and lifeless ruin. Nothing grew or moved in the wide waste. The ground was packed and baked until it was as intractable as iron. Loose dirt turned to dust. The entire landscape shimmered with heat like the aftermath of destruction.

Striving against the stupefaction of his fatigue, Covenant asked Linden to tell him about the condition of the terrain.

“It's wrong.” She bit out words as if the sight were an obloquy directed at her personally. “It shouldn't be like this. It's like a running sore. I keep expecting to see it bleed. It isn't supposed to be like this.”

Isn't supposed to be like this! he echoed. The Land had become like Joan. Something broken.

The heat haze stung his eyes. He could not see the ground except as a swath of pale ichor; he felt that he was treading pain. His numb feet stumbled helplessly.

She caught his arm, steadied him. Clenching his old sorrow, he drew himself upright. His voice shook. “What's causing it?”

“I can't tell,” she said grimly. “But it has something to do with that ring around the sun. The sun itself”- her hands released him slowly — “seems natural.”

“Bloody hell,” he breathed. “What has that bastard done?”

But he did not expect an answer. In spite of her penetrating vision, Linden knew less than he did. Deliberately, he gave himself a VSE. Then he went on looking for Marid. In his rue and pain, the thought of a man lying bound at the mercy of the sun loomed as the one idea which made everything else abominable.

Wearily, doggedly, he and Linden trudged through the heat-leeched landscape. The dust coated his mouth with the taste of failure; the glare lanced through his eyeballs. As his weakness deepened, he drifted into a vague dizziness. Only the landmark of the mountains, now east and somewhat south of him, enabled him to keep his direction. The sun beat down as if onto an anvil, hammering moisture and strength out of him like a smith shaping futility. He did not know how he stayed on his feet. At times, he felt himself wandering over the colourless earth, through the haze, as if he were a fragment of the desolation.

He might have wandered past his goal; but Linden somehow retained more alertness. She tugged him to a stop, dragged his attention out of the slow eddying sopor of the heat. “Look.”

His lips framed empty questions. For a moment, he could not understand why he was no longer moving.

“Look,” she repeated. Her voice was an arid croak.

They stood in a wide bowl of dust. Clouds billowed from every shuffle of their feet. Before them, two wooden stakes had been driven into the ground. The stakes were some distance apart, as if they had been set to secure the arms of a man lying outstretched. Tied to the stakes were loops of rope.

The loops were intact.

A body's length from the stakes were two holes in the ground-the kind of holes made by stakes pounded in and then pulled out.

Covenant swallowed dryly. “Marid.” The word abraded his throat.

“He got away,” Linden said hoarsely.

Covenant's legs folded. He sat down, coughing weakly at the dust he raised. Got away.

Linden squatted in front of him. The nearness of her face forced him to look at her. Her voice scraped as if it were full of sand. “I don't know how he did it, but he's better off than we are. This heat's going to kill us.”

His tongue fumbled. “I had to try. He was innocent.”

Awkwardly, she reached out, wiped beads of useless sweat from his forehead. “You look awful.”

He peered at her through his exhaustion. Dirt caked her lips and cheeks, collected in the lines on either side of her mouth. Sweat-trails streaked her face. Her eyes were glazed.

“So do you.”

“Then we'd better do something about it.” A tremor eroded her effort to sound resolute. But she stood up, helped him to his feet. “Let's go back. Maybe Sunder's looking for us.”

He nodded. He had forgotten the Graveller.

But when he and Linden turned to retrace their way, they saw a figure coming darkly through the shimmer.

He stopped, squinted. Mirage? Linden stood near him as if to prevent him from losing his balance. They waited.

The figure approached until they recognized Sunder.

He halted twenty paces from them.

In his right hand, he gripped his poniard. This time, he seemed perfectly familiar with its use.

Covenant watched the Graveller dumbly, as if the knife had made them strangers to each other. Linden's hand touched a warning to his arm.

“Thomas Covenant.” Sunder's face looked like hot stone. “What is my name?”

What-? Covenant frowned at the intervening heat.

“Speak my name!” the Graveller spat fiercely. “Do not compel me to slay you.”

Slay? Covenant made an effort to reach through the confusion.

“Sunder,” he croaked. "Graveller of Mithil Stonedown. Holder of the Sunstone."

Incomprehension stretched Sunder's countenance. “Linden Avery?” he asked falteringly. “What is the name of my father?”

“Was,” she said in a flat tone. “His name was Nassic son of Jous. He's dead.”

Sunder gaped as if Covenant and Linden were miraculous. Then he dropped his hands to his sides. “Heaven and Earth! It is not possible. The Sunbane-Never have I beheld-” He shook his head in astonishment, “Ah, you are a mystery! How can such things be? Does one white ring alter the order of life?”

“Sometimes,” Covenant muttered. He was trying to follow a fractured sequence of memories. Everything he did was an unintentional assault on the Graveller's preconceptions. He wanted to ease Sunder with some kind of explanation. The heat haze seemed to blur the distinction between past and present. Something about his boots-? He forced words past his parched lips. “The first time I was here-” Boots-yes, that was it. Drool Rockworm had been able to locate him through the alien touch of his boots on the ground. “My boots. Her shoes. They don't come from the Land. Maybe that's what protected us.”

Sunder grabbed at the suggestion as if it were a benison. “Yes. It must be so. Flesh is flesh, susceptible to the Sunbane. But your footwear-it is unlike any I have seen. Surely you were shielded at the sun's first touch, else you would have been altered beyond any power to know me.” Then his face darkened, “But could you not have told me? I feared-” The clenching of his jaws described eloquently the extremity of his fear.

“We didn't know.” Covenant wanted to lie down, close his eyes, forget. “We were lucky.” A moment passed before he found the will to ask, “Marid-?”

At once, Sunder put everything else aside. He went to look at the stakes, the holes. A frown knotted his forehead. “Fools,” he grated. “I warned them to ware such things. None can foretell the Sunbane. Now there is evil upon the Plains.”

“You mean,” asked Linden, “he didn't escape? He isn't safe?”

In response, the Graveller rasped, “Did I not say there was not time? You have achieved nothing but your own prostration. It is enough,” he went on stiffly. “I have followed you to this useless end. Now you will accompany me.”

Linden stared at Sunder. “Where are we going?”

“To find shelter,” he said in a calmer tone. “We cannot endure this sun.”

Covenant gestured eastward, toward a region with which he was familiar. “The hills-”

Sunder shook his head. “There is shelter in the hills. But to gain it we must pass within scope of Windshorn Stonedown. That is certain sacrifice-for any stranger, as for the Graveller of Mithil Stonedown. We go west, to the Mithil River.”

Covenant could not argue. Ignorance crippled his ability to make decisions. When Sunder took his arm and turned him away from the sun, he began to scuffle stiffly out of the bowl of dust.

Linden moved at his side. Her stride was unsteady; she seemed dangerously weak. Sunder was stronger; but his eyes were bleak, as if he could see disaster ahead. And Covenant could barely lift his feet. The sun, still climbing toward mid-morning, clung to his shoulders, hagriding him. Heat flushed back and forth across his skin-a vitiating fever which echoed the haze of the scorched earth. His eyes felt raw from the scraping of his eyelids. After a time, he began to stumble as if the ligatures of his knees were parting.

Then he was in the dirt, with no idea of how he had fallen. Sunder supported him so that he could sit up. The Graveller's face was grey with dust; he, too, had begun to suffer. “Thomas Covenant,” he panted, “this is fatal to you. You must have water. Will you not make use of your white ring?”

Covenant's respiration was shallow and ragged. He stared into the haze as if he had gone blind.

“The white ring,” Sunder pleaded. “You must raise water, lest, you die.”

Water. He pulled the shards of himself together around that thought. Impossible. He could not concentrate. Had never used wild magic for anything except contention. It was not a panacea.

Both Sunder and Linden were studying him as if he were responsible for their hopes. They were failing along with him. For their sakes, he would have been willing to make the attempt. But it was impossible for other reasons as well. Tortuously, as if he had been disjointed, he shifted forward, got his knees under him, then his feet.

“Ur-Lord!” protested the Graveller.

“I don't,” Covenant muttered, hall coughing, “don't know how.” He wanted to shout. “I'm a leper. I can't see-can't feel- ” The Earth was closed to him; it lay blank and meaningless under his feet-a concatenation of haze, nothing more. “I don't know how to reach it.” We need Earthpower. And a Lord to wield it.

There's no Earthpower. The Lords are gone. He had no words potent enough to convey his helplessness. “I just can't.”

Sunder groaned. But he hesitated only momentarily. Then he sighed in resignation, “Very well. Yet we must have water.” He took out his knife. “My strength is greater than yours. Perhaps I am able to spare a little blood.” Grimly, he directed the blade toward the mapwork of scars on his left forearm.

Covenant lurched to try to stop him.

Linden was quicker. She seized Sunder's wrist. “No!”;

The Graveller twisted free of her, gritted acutely, “We have water.”

“Not like that.” The cuts on Nassic's hand burned in Covenant's memory; he rejected such power instinctively.

“Do you wish to die?”

“No.” Covenant upheld himself by force of will. “But I'm not that desperate. Not yet, anyway.”

“Your knife isn't even clean,” added Linden. “If septicemia set in, I'd have to burn it out.”

Sunder closed his eyes as if to shut out what they were saying.: “I will outlive you both under this sun.” His jaws chewed his voice into a barren whisper. “Ah, my father, what have you done1; to me? Is this the outcome of all your mad devoir?”

“Suit yourself,” Covenant said brutally, trying to keep Sunder from despair or rebellion. “But at least have the decency to wait until we're too weak to stop you.”

The Graveller's eyes burst open. He spat a curse. “Decency, is it?” he grated. “You are swift to cast shame upon people whose lives you do not comprehend. Well, let us hasten the moment when I may decently save you.” With a thrust of his arm, he pushed Covenant into motion, then caught him around the waist to keep him from falling, and began half dragging him westward.

In a moment, Linden came to Covenant's other side, shrugged his arm over her shoulders so that she could help support him. Braced in that fashion, he was able to travel.

But the sun was remorseless. Slowly, ineluctably, it beat him toward abjection. By mid-morning, he was hardly carrying a fraction of his own weight. To his burned eyes, the haze sang threnodies of prostration; motes of darkness began to flit across his vision. From time to time, he saw small clumps of night crouching on the pale ground just beyond clarity, as if they were waiting for him.

Then the earth seemed to rise up in front of him. Sunder came to a halt. Linden almost fell; but Covenant clung to her somehow. He fought to focus his eyes. After a moment, he saw that the rise was a shelf of rock jutting westward.

Sunder tugged him and Linden forward. They limped past another clump like a low bush, into the shadow of the rock.

The jut of the shelf formed an eroded lee large enough to shelter several people. In the shadow, the rock and dirt felt cool. Linden helped Sunder place Covenant sitting against the balm of the stone. Covenant tried to lie down; but the Graveller stopped him, and Linden panted, “Don't. You might go to sleep. You've lost too much fluid,”

He nodded vaguely. The coolness was only relative, and he was febrile with thirst. No amount of shade could answer the unpity of the sun. But the shadow itself was bliss to him, and he was content. Linden sat down on one side of him; Sunder, on the other. He closed his eyes, let himself drift.

Some time later, he became conscious of voices. Linden and Sunder were talking. The hebetude of her tone betrayed the difficulty of staying alert. Sunder's responses were distant, as if he found her inquiries painful but could not think of any way to refuse them.

“Sunder,” she asked dimly, “what is Mithil Stonedown going to do without you?”

“Linden Avery?” He seemed not to understand her question.

“Call me Linden. After today-” Her voice trailed away.

He hesitated, then said, “Linden.”

“You're the Graveller. What will they do without a Graveller?”

“Ah.” Now he caught her meaning. “I signify little. The loss of the Sunstone is of more import, yet even that loss can be overcome. The Stonedown is chary of its lore. My prentice is adept in all the rites which must be performed in the absence of the Sunstone. Without doubt, he shed Kalina my mother at the sun's rising. The Stonedown will endure. How otherwise could I have done what I have done?”

After a pause, she asked, “You're not married?”

“No.” His reply was like a wince.

Linden seemed to hear a wide range of implications in that one word. Quietly, she said, “But you were.”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

Sunder was silent at first. But then he replied, "Among my people, only the Graveller is given the choice of his own mate. The survival of the Stonedown depends upon its children. Mating for children is not left to the hazard of affection or preference. But by long custom, the Graveller is given freedom. As recompense for the burden of his work.

"The choice of my heart fell upon Aimil daughter of Anest. Anest was sister to Kalina my mother. From childhood, Aimil and I were dear to each other. We were gladly wed, and gladly sought to vindicate our choosing with children.

“A son came to us, and was given the name Nelbrin, which is 'heart's child.'” His tone was as astringent as the terrain. "He was a pale child, not greatly well. But he grew as a child should grow and was a treasure to us.

“For a score of turnings of the moon he grew. He was slow in learning to walk, and not steady upon his legs, but he came at last to walk with glee. Until-” He swallowed convulsively. "Until by mischance Aimil my wife injured him in our home. She turned from the hearth bearing a heavy pot, and Nelbrin our son had walked to stand behind her. The pot struck him upon the chest.

“From that day, he sickened toward death. A dark swelling grew in him, and his life faltered.”

“Hemophilia,” Linden breathed almost inaudibly. “Poor kid.”

Sunder did not stop. “When his death was written upon his face for all to see, the Stonedown invoked judgment. I was commanded to sacrifice him for the good of the people.”

A rot gnawed at Covenant's guts. He looked up at the Graveller. The dryness in his throat felt like slow strangulation. He seemed to hear the ground sizzling.

In protest, Linden asked, “Your own son? What did you do?”

Sunder stared out into the Sunbane as if it were the story of his life. “I could not halt his death. The desert sun and the sun of pestilence had left us sorely in need. I shed his life to raise water and food for the Stonedown.”

Oh, Sunder! Covenant groaned.

Tightly, Linden demanded, “How did Aimil feel about that?”

“It maddened her. She fought to prevent me-and when she could not, she became wild in her mind. Despair afflicted her, and she-” For a moment, Sunder could not summon the words he needed. Then he went on harshly, “She committed a mortal harm against herself. So that her death would not be altogether meaningless, I shed her also.”

So that her-Hellfire! Covenant understood now why the thought of killing his mother had driven Sunder to abandon his home. How many loved ones could a man bear to kill?

Grimly, Linden said, “It wasn't your fault. You did what you had to do.” Passion gathered in her tone. “It's this Sunbane.”

The Graveller did not look at her. “All men and women die. It signifies nothing to complain.” He sounded as sun-tormented as the Plains. “What else do you desire to know of me? You need only ask. I have no secrets from you.”

Covenant ached to comfort Sunder; but he knew nothing about comfort. Anger and defiance were the only answers he understood. Because he could not ease the Stonedownor, he tried to distract him. “Tell me about Nassic.” The words were rough in his mouth. “How did he come to have a son?”

Linden glared at Covenant as if she were vexed by his insensitivity; but Sunder relaxed visibly. He seemed relieved by the question-glad to escape the futility of his mourning. “Nassic my father,” he said, with a weariness which served as calm, "was like Jous his father, and like Prassan his father's father. He was a man of Mithil Stonedown.

"Jous his father lived in the place he named his temple, and from time to time Nassic visited Jous, out of respect for his father, and also to ascertain that no harm had befallen him. The Stonedown wed Nassic to Kalina, and they were together as any young man and woman. But then Jous fell toward his death. Nassic went to the temple to bear his father to Mithil Stonedown for sacrifice. He did not return. Dying, Jous placed his hands upon Nassic, and the madness or prophecy of the father passed into the son. Thus Nassic was lost to the Stonedown.

“This loss was sore to Kalina my mother. She was ill content with just one son. Many a time, she went to the temple, to give her love to my father and to plead for his. Always she returned weeping and barren. I fear-” He paused sadly. “I fear she hurled herself at Marid hoping to die.”

Gradually, Covenant's attention drifted. He was too weak to concentrate. Dimly, he noted the shifting angle of the sun. Noon had come, laying sunlight within inches of his feet. By mid-afternoon, the shade would be gone. By mid-afternoon -

He could not survive much more of the sun's direct weight.

The dark clump which he had passed near the shelf was still there. Apparently, it was not a mirage. He blinked at it, trying to make out details. If not a mirage, then what? A bush? What kind of bush could endure this sun, when every other form of life had been burned away?

The question raised echoes in his memory, but he could not hear them clearly. Exhaustion and thirst deafened his mind.

“Die?”

He was hardly aware that he had spoken aloud. His voice felt like sand rubbing against stone. What kind-? He strove to focus his eyes. “That bush.” He nodded weakly toward the patch of darkness. “What is it?”

Sunder squinted. “It is aliantha. Such bushes may be found in any place, but they are most common near the River. In some way, they defy the Sunbane.” He dismissed the subject. “They are a most deadly poison.”

“Poison?” Pain sliced Covenant's lips; the vehemence of his outcry split them. Blood began to run through the dust like a trail of fury cleaving his chin. Not aliantha!

The Graveller reached toward Covenant's face as if those dirty red drops were precious. Empowered by memories, Covenant struck Sunder's hand aside. “Poison?” he croaked. In times past, the rare aliment of aliantha had sustained him more often than he could recollect. If they had become poison-! He was abruptly giddy with violence. If they had become poison, then the Land had not simply lost its Earthpower. The Earthpower had been corrupted! He wanted to batter Sunder with his fists. “How do you know?”

Linden caught at his shoulder. “Covenant!”

“It is contained in the Rede of the na-Mhoram,” rasped Sunder. “I am a Graveller-it is my work to make use of that knowledge. I know it to be true.”

No! Covenant grated. “Have you tried it?”

Sunder gaped at him. “No.”

“Do you know anybody who ever tried it?”

“It is poison! No man or woman willingly consumes poison.”

“Hell and blood.” Bracing himself on the stone, Covenant heaved to his feet. “I don't believe it. He can't destroy the entire Law. If he did, the Land wouldn't exist anymore.”

The Graveller sprang erect, gripped Covenant's arms, shook him fiercely. “It is poison.”

Mustering all his passion, Covenant responded, “No!”

Sunder's visage knurled as if only the clench of his muscles kept him from exploding. With one wrench of his hands, he thrust Covenant to the ground. “You are mad.” His voice was iron and bitterness. “You seduced me from my home, asking my aid-but at every turn you defy me. You must seek for Marid. Madness! You must refuse all safety against the Sunbane. Madness! You must decline to raise water, nor permit me to raise it. Madness! Now nothing will content you but poison.” When Covenant tried to rise, Sunder shoved him back. “It is enough. Make any further attempt toward the aliantha, and I will strike you senseless.”

Covenant's gaze raged up at the Graveller; but Sunder did not flinch. Desperation inured him to contradiction; he was trying to reclaim some control over his doom.

Holding Sunder's rigid stare, Covenant climbed to his feet, stood swaying before the Graveller. Linden was erect behind Sunder; but Covenant did not look at her. Softly, he said, “I do not believe that aliantha is poisonous.” Then he turned, and began to shamble toward the bush.

A howl burst from Sunder. Covenant tried to dodge; but Sunder crashed into him headlong, carried him sprawling to the dirt. A blow on the back of his head sent lights across his vision like fragments of vertigo.

Then Sunder fell away. Covenant levered his legs under him, to see Linden standing over the Graveller. She held him in a thumb-lock which pressed him to the ground.

Covenant stumbled to the bush.

His head reeled. He fell to his knees. The bush was pale with dust and bore little resemblance to the dark green-and-viridian plant he remembered. But the leaves were holly-like and firm, though few. Three small fruit the size of blueberries clung to the branches in defiance of the Sunbane.

Trembling, he plucked one, wiped the dust away to see the berry's true colour.

At the edge of his sight, he saw Sunder knock Linden's feet away, break free of her.

Gritting his courage, Covenant put the berry in his mouth.

“Covenant!” Sunder cried.

The world spun wildly, then sprang straight. Cool juice filled Covenant's mouth with a sapor of peach made tangy by salt and lime. At once, new energy burst through him. Deliciousness cleansed his throat of dirt and thirst and blood. All his nerves thrilled to a sapor he had not tasted for ten long years: the quintessential nectar of the Land.

Sunder and Linden were on their feet, staring at him.

A sound like dry sobbing came from him. His sight was a blur of relief and gratitude. The seed dropped from his lips. “Oh, dear God,” he murmured brokenly. “There's Earthpower yet.”

A moment later, Linden reached him. She helped him to his feet, peered into his face. “Are you-?” she began, then stopped herself. “No, you're all right. Better. I can already see the difference. How-?”

He could not stop shaking. He wanted to hug her; but he only allowed himself to touch her cheek, lift a strand of hair away from her mouth. Then, to answer her, thank her, he plucked another berry, and gave it to her.

“Eat-”

She held it gently, looked at it. Sudden tears overflowed her eyes. Her lower lip trembled as she whispered, “It's the first healthy-” Her voice caught.

“Eat it,” he urged thickly.

She raised it to her mouth. Her teeth closed on it.

Slowly, a look of wonder spread over her countenance. Her posture straightened; she began to smile like a cool dawn.

Covenant nodded to tell her that he understood. “Spit out the seed. Maybe another one will grow.”

She took the seed in her hand, gazed at it for a moment as if it had been sanctified before she tossed it to the ground.

Sunder had not moved. He stood with his arms clamped across his chest. His eyes were dull with the horror of watching his life become false.

Carefully, Covenant picked the last berry. His stride was almost steady as he went to Sunder, His heart sang: Earthpower!

“Sunder,” he said, half insisting, half pleading, “this is aliantha. They used to be called treasure-berries- the gift of the Earth to anybody who suffered from hunger or need. This is what the Land was like.”

Sunder did not respond. The glazing of his gaze was complete.

“It's not poison,” Linden said clearly, “It's immune to the Sunbane.”

“Eat it,” Covenant urged. “This is why we're here. What we want to accomplish. Health. Earthpower. Eat it.”

With a painful effort, Sunder dredged up his answer. “I do not wish to trust you.” His voice was a wilderland. “You violate all my life. When I have learned that aliantha are not poison, you will seek to teach me that the Sunbane does not exist-that all the life of the Land through all the generations has had no meaning. That the shedding I have done is no less than murder.” He swallowed harshly. “But I must. I must find some truth to take the place of the truth you destroy.”

Abruptly, he took the berry, put it in his mouth.

For a moment, his soul was naked in his face. His initial anticipation of harm became involuntary delight; his inner world struggled to alter itself. His hands quavered when he took the seed from his mouth. “Heaven and Earth!” he breathed. His awe was as exquisite as anguish. “Covenant-” His jaw worked to form words. “Is this truly the Land-the Land of which my father dreamed?”

“Yes.”

“Then he was mad.” One deep spasm of grief shook Sunder before he tugged back about him the tattered garment of his self-command. “I must learn to be likewise mad.”

Turning away, he went back to the shelf of rock, seated himself in the shade, and covered his face with his hands.

To give Sunder's disorientation at least a degree of privacy, Covenant shifted his attention to Linden. The new lightness of her expression ameliorated her habitual severity, lifted some of her beauty out from under the streaked dust on her face. “Thank you.” He began to say, For trying to save my life. Back there in the woods. But he did not want to remember that blow. Instead, he said, “For getting Sunder off me.” I didn't know you trusted me that much. “Where did you learn that thumb-hold?”

“Oh, that.” Her grin was half grimness, half amusement. “The med school I went to was in a pretty rough neighbourhood. The security guards gave self-defence lessons.”

Covenant found himself wondering how long it had been since a woman had last smiled at him. Before he could reply, she glanced upward. “We ought to get out of the sun. One treasure-berry apiece isn't going to keep us going very long.”

“True.” The aliantha had blunted his hunger, eased his body's yearning for water, restored a measure of life to his muscles. But it could not make him impervious to the sun. Around him, the Plains swam with heat as if the fabric of the ground were being bleached away fiber by fiber. He rubbed absent-mindedly at the blood on his chin, started toward Sunder.

Linden halted him. “Covenant.”

He turned. She stood facing eastward, back over the shelf of rock. Both hands shaded her eyes.

“Something's coming.”

Sunder joined them; together, they squinted into the haze. “What the hell-?” Covenant muttered.

At first he saw nothing but heat and pale dirt. But then he glimpsed an erect figure, shimmering darkly in and out of sight.

The figure grew steadier as it approached. Slowly, it became solid, transubstantiating itself like an avatar of the Sunbane. It was a man. He wore the apparel of a Stonedownor.

“Who-?”

“Oh, my God!” Linden gasped.

The man came closer.

Sunder spat, “Marid!”

Marid? An abrupt weakness struck Covenant's knees.

The Sunbane will have no mercy-

The man had Marid's eyes, chancrous with self-loathing, mute supplication, lust. He still wore stakes tied to each of his ankles. His gait was a shambling of eagerness and dread.

He was a monster. Scales covered the lower half of his face; both mouth and nose were gone. And his arms were snakes. Thick scale-clad bodies writhed from his shoulders; serpent-heads gaped where his hands had been, brandishing fangs as white as bone. His chest heaved for air, and the snakes hissed.

Hellfire.

Linden stared at Marid. Nausea distorted her mouth. She was paralyzed, hardly breathing. The sight of Marid's inflicted ill reft her of thought, courage, motion.

“Ah, Marid, my friend,” Sunder whispered miserably. “This is the retribution of the Sunbane, which none can foretell. If you were innocent, as the ur-Lord insists-” He groaned in grief. “Forgive me.”

But an instant later his voice hardened. “Avaunt, Marid!” he barked. “Ware us! Your life is forfeit here!”

Marid's gaze flinched as if he understood; but he continued to advance, moving purposefully toward the shelf of rock.

“Marid!” Sunder snatched out his poniard. “I have guilt enough in your doom. Do not thrust this upon me.”

Marid's eyes shouted a voiceless warning at the Graveller.

Covenant's throat felt like sand; his lungs laboured. In the back of his mind, a pulse of outrage beat like lifeblood.

Three steps to his side, Linden stood frozen and appalled.

Hissing voraciously, Marid flung himself into a run. He sprinted to the rock, up the shelf.

For one splinter of time, Covenant could not move. He saw Marid launch himself at Linden, saw fangs reaching toward her face, saw her standing as if her heart had stopped.

Her need snatched Covenant into motion. He took two desperate strides, crashed head and shoulders against her. They tumbled together across the hard dirt.

He disentangled himself, flipped to his feet.

Marid landed heavily, rolling to get his legs under him.

Wielding his knife, Sunder attempted to close with Marid. But a flurry of fangs drove him back.

At once, Marid rushed toward Linden again.

Covenant met the charge. He stopped one serpent head with his right forearm, caught the other scaly body in his left fist.

The free snake reared back to strike.

In that instant, Sunder reached into the struggle. Too swiftly for the snakes to react, he cut Marid's throat. Viscid fluid splashed the front of Covenant's clothes.

Sunder dropped his dead friend. Blood poured into the dirt. Covenant recoiled several steps. As she rose to her knees, Linden gagged as if she were being asphyxiated by the Sunbane.

The Graveller paid no heed to his companions. A frenetic haste possessed him. “Blood,” he panted. “Life.” He slapped his hands into the spreading pool, rubbed them together, smeared red onto his forehead and cheeks. “At least your death will be of some avail. It is my guilt-gift.”

Covenant stared in dismay. He had not known that a human body could be so lavish of blood.

Snatching out the Sunstone, Sunder bent his head to Marid's neck, sucked blood directly from the cut. With the stone held in both palms, he spewed fluid onto it so that it lay cupped in Marid's rife. Then he looked upward and began to chant in a language Covenant could not understand.

Around him, the air concentrated as if the heat took personal notice of his invocation. Energy blossomed from the orcrest.

A shaft of vermeil as straight as the line between life and death shot toward the sun. It crackled like a discharge of lightning; but it was steady and palpable, sustained by blood.

It consumed the blood in Sunder's hands, drank the blood from Marid's veins, leeched the blood from the earth. Soon every trace of red was gone. Marid's throat gaped like a dry grin.

Still chanting, Sunder set down the Sunstone near Marid's head. The shaft binding the orcrest to the sun did not falter.

Almost at once, water bubbled up around the stone. It gathered force until it was a small spring, as fresh and clear as if it arose from mountain rock rather than from barren dust.

As he watched, Covenant's head began to throb. He was flushed and sweating under the weight of the sun.

Still Sunder chanted; and beside the spring, a green shoot raised its head. It grew with staggering celerity; it became a vine, spread itself along the ground, put out leaves. In a moment, it produced several buds which swelled like melons.

The Graveller gestured Linden toward the spring. Her expression had changed from suffocation to astonishment. Moving as if she were entranced, she knelt beside the spring, put her lips into the water. She jerked back at once, surprised by the water's coldness. Then she was drinking deeply, greedily.

A maleficent fire bloomed in Covenant's right forearm. His breathing was ragged. Dust filled his mouth. He could feel his pulse beating in the base of his throat.

After a time, Linden pulled away from the spring, turned to him. “It's good,” she said in dim wonder. “It's good.”

He did not move, did not look at her. Dread spurted up in him like water from dry ground.

“Come on,” she urged. “Drink.”

He could not stop staring at Marid. Without shifting his gaze, he extended his right arm toward her.

She glanced at it, then gave a sharp cry and leaped to him, took hold of his arm to look at it closely.

He was loath to see what she saw; but he forced himself to gaze downward.

His forearm was livid. A short way up from his wrist, two puncture marks glared bright red against the darkness of the swelling. “Bastard bit me,” he coughed as if he were already dying.

Eight: The Corruption of the Sun

“SUNDER!” Linden barked. “Give me your knife,”

The Graveller had faltered when he saw the fang marks; and the spring had also faltered. But he recovered quickly, restored the cadence of his chant. The shaft of Sunbane-fire wavered, then grew stable once more. The melons continued to ripen.

Still chanting, he extended his poniard toward Linden. She strode over to him, took the blade. She did not hesitate; all her actions were certain. Stooping to one of Marid's ankles, she cut a section of the rope which bound the stake.

The pain became a hammer in Covenant's forearm, beating as if it meant to crush the bones. Mutely, he gripped the elbow with his left hand, squeezed hard in an effort to restrict the spread of the venom. He did not want to die like this, with all his questions unanswered, and nothing accomplished.

A moment later, Linden returned. Her lips were set in lines of command. When she said, “Sit down,” his knees folded as if she held the strings of his will.

She sat in front of him, straightened his arm between them. Deftly, she looped the rope just above his elbow, pulled it tight until he winced; then she knotted it.

“Now,” she said evenly, “I'm going to have to cut you. Get out as much of the venom as I can.”

He nodded. He tried to swallow, but could not.

She set the point of the blade against the swelling, abruptly snatched it back. Her tone betrayed a glimpse of strain. “Goddamn knife's too dirty.”

Frowning, she snapped, “Don't move,” and jumped to her feet. Purposefully, she went to the hot red shaft of Sunder's power. He hissed a warning, but she ignored him. With a physician's care, she touched the poniard to the beam.

Sparks sprayed from the contact; fire licked along the knife. When she withdrew it, she nodded grimly to herself.

She rejoined Covenant, braced his arm. For a moment, she met his gaze. “This is going to hurt,” she said straight into his eyes. “But it'll be worse if I don't do it.”

He fought to clear his throat. “Go ahead.”

Slowly, deliberately, she cut a deep cross between the fang marks. A scream tore his flesh. He went rigid, but did not permit himself to flinch. This was necessary; he had done such things himself. Paul was life; only the dead felt no pain. He remained still as she bent her head to suck at the incisions. With his free hand, he gripped his forehead, clutching the bones of his skull for courage.

Her hands squeezed the swelling, multiplying fire. Her lips hurt him like teeth as she drew blood and venom into her mouth.

The taste shattered her composure; she spat his blood fiercely at the ground. “God!” she gasped. “What kind-?” At once, she attacked the wound again, sucked and spat with violent revulsion. Her hands shuddered as she gripped his arm.

What kind-? Her words throbbed along the pressure in his head. What was she talking about?

A third time she sucked, spat. Her features strained whitely, like clenched knuckles. With unintended brutality, she dropped his arm; a blaze shot up through his shoulder. Springing to her feet, she stamped on the spat blood, ground it into the dirt as if it were an outrage she wanted to eradicate from the world.

“Linden,” he panted wanly through his pain, “what is it?”

“Venom!” She fulminated with repugnance. “What kind of place is this?” Abruptly, she hastened to Sunder's spring, began rinsing her mouth. Her shoulders were knots of abhorrence.

When she returned to Covenant, her whole body was trembling, and her eyes were hollow. “Poison.” She hugged herself as if she were suddenly cold. “I don't have words for it. That wasn't just venom. It was something more-something worse. Like the Sunbane. Some kind of moral poison.” She pulled her hands through her hair, fighting for control. “God, you're going to be so sick-! You need a hospital. Except there's no antivenin in the world for poison like that.”

Covenant whirled in pain, could not distinguish between it and fear. Moral poison? He did not understand her description, but it clarified other questions. It explained why the Raver in Marid had allowed itself to be exposed. So that Marid would be condemned to the Sunbane, would become a monster capable of inflicting such poison. But why? What would Lord Foul gain if Covenant died like this? And why had Marid aimed his attack at Linden? Because she was sensitive to the Land, could see things the Despiser did not want seen?

Covenant could not think. The reek of blood on his shirt filled his senses. Everything became dread; he wanted to wail. But Linden came to his aid. Somehow, she suppressed her own distress. Urging him upright, she supported Mm to the water so that he could drink. He was already palsied. But his body recognized its need for water; he swallowed thirstily at the spring.

When he was done, she helped him into the shade of the shelf. Then she sat beside him and held his livid arm with her hands, trying in that way to make him comfortable.

Blood dripped unremarked from his cute. The swelling spread darkness up toward his elbow.

Sunder had been chanting continuously; but now he stopped. He had at last been able to make his invocation briefly self-sustaining. When he fell silent, the orcrest's vermeil shaft flickered and went out, leaving the stone empty, like a hole in the ground; but the spring continued to flow for a few moments. He had time to drink deeply before the water sank back into the barren earth.

With his poniard, he cut the melons from their vine, then bore them into the shade, and sat down on Covenant's left. Unsteadily, he began slicing the melons into sections, scooping out the seeds. The seeds he put away in a pocket of his jerkin. Then he handed sections of melon across to Linden.

“This is ussusimiel” he said in a fragile tone, as if he were exhausted and feared contradiction. “At need it will sustain life with no other food.” Wearily, he began to eat.

Linden tasted the fruit. She nodded her approval, then started to devour the sections Sunder had given her. Dully, Covenant accepted a piece for himself. But he felt unable to eat. Pain excruciated the bones of his right arm; and that fire seemed to draw all other strength out of him, leaving him to drown in a wide slow whirl of lassitude. He was going to pass out-And there were so many things his companions did not understand.

One was more important than the others. He tried to focus his sight on the Graveller. But he could not keep his vision clear. He closed his eyes so that he would not have to watch the way the Stonedownor blurred and ran.

“Sunder.”

“Ur-Lord?”

Covenant sighed, dreading Sunder's reaction. “Listen.” He concentrated the vestiges of his determination in his voice. “We can't stay here. I haven't told you where we're going.”

“Let it pass,” said his guide quietly. “You are harmed and hungry. You must eat. We will consider such questions later.”

“Listen.” Covenant could feel midnight creeping toward him. He strove to articulate his urgency. “Take me to Revelstone.”

“Revelstone?” Sunder exploded in protest. “You wander in your wits. Do you not know that Revelstone is the Keep of the na-Mhoram? Have I not spoken of the Rede concerning you? The Riders journey throughout the Land, commanding your destruction. Do you believe that they will welcome you courteously?”

“I don't care about that.” Covenant shook his head, then found that he could not stop. The muscles of his neck jerked back and forth like the onset of hysteria. “That's where the answers are. I've got to find out how this happened.” He tried to gesture toward the barrenness; but all his horizons were dark, blinded by dust and dead air. “What the Sunbane is. I can't fight it if I don't know what it is.”

“Ur-Lord, it is three hundred leagues.”

“I know. But I've got to go. I have to know what happened.” He insisted weakly, like a sick child. “So I can fight it”

“Heaven and Earth!” Sunder groaned. “This is the greatest madness of all.” For a long moment, he remained still, scouring himself for endurance or wisdom. Please, Covenant breathed into the silence. Sunder. Please.

Abruptly, the Graveller muttered, “Ah, well. I have no longer any other demand upon me. And you are not to be denied. In the name of Nassic my father-and of Marid my friend, whose life you strove to redeem at your cost-I will guide you where you wish to go. Now eat. Even prophets and madmen require sustenance.”

Covenant nodded dimly. Shutting his mind to the smell of blood, he took a bite of the ussusimiel.

It could not compare with aliantha for taste and potency; but it felt clean in his mouth, and seemed to relieve some of the congestion of his pain. As he ate, the darkness receded somewhat.

After he had consumed his share of the fruit, he settled himself to rest for a while. But Sunder stood up suddenly. “Come,” he said to Linden. “Let us be on our way.”

“He shouldn't be moved,” she replied flatly.

“There will be aliantha nigh the River. Perhaps they will have power to aid him.”

“Maybe. But he shouldn't be moved. It'll make the venom spread.”

“Linden Avery,” Sunder breathed. “Marid was my friend. I cannot remain in this place.”

Covenant became conscious of a dim fetor in the air. It came from his arm. Or from Marid's corpse.

For a moment, Linden did not respond. Then she sighed, “Give me the knife. He can't travel with his arm like that.”

Sunder handed her his poniard. She looked closely at Covenant's swelling. It had grown upward past his elbow. Its black pressure made the rope bite deeply into his arm.

He watched tacitly as she cut away the tourniquet.

Blood rushed at his wound. He cried out.

Then the darkness came over him for a time. He was on his feet, and his arms were hooked over the shoulders of his companions, and they were moving westward. The sun beat at them as if they were an affront to its suzerainty. The air was turgid with heat; it seemed to resist respiration. In all directions, the stone and soil of the Plains shimmered as if they were evaporating. Pain laughed garishly in his head at every step. If Linden or Sunder did not find some kind of febrifuge for him soon-Linden was on his left now, so that her stumbling would not directly jar his sick arm. Oblivion came and went. When Covenant became aware of the voice, he could not be sure of it. It might have been the voice of a dream.

"And he who wields white wild magic gold

is a paradox -

for he is everything and nothing,

hero and fool,

potent, helpless-

and with the one word of truth or treachery

he will save or damn the Earth

because he is mad and sane,

cold and passionate,

lost and found."

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

“A song,” said the Graveller. “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 honour 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.

' “Oh, come, my love, and bed with me;

Your mate knows neither lust nor heart-

Forget him in this ecstasy.

I joy to play the treacher's part.'

Acute with blandishments and spells,

Spoke a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.

'Diassomer Mininderain,

The mate of might, and Master's wife,

All stars' and heavens' chatelaine,

With power over realm and strife,

Attended well, the story tells,

To a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.

'With a-Jeroth the lady ran;

Diassomer with fear and dread

Fled from the Master's ruling span.

On Earth she hides her trembling head,

While all about her laughter wells

From a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.

' “Forgive!' “ she cries with woe and pain;

Her treacher's laughter hurts her sore.

“His blandishments have been my bane.

I yearn my Master to adore.”

For in her ears the spurning knells

Of a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.

'Wrath is the Master — fire and rage.

Retribution fills his hands.

Attacking comes he, sword and gage,

'Gainst treachery in all the lands.

Then crippled are the cunning spells

Of a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.

'Mininderain he treats with rue;

No heaven-home for broken trust,

But children given to pursue

All treachery to death and dust.

Thus Earth became a gallow-fells

For a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells. '

The Graveller 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 Graveller 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 vice of heat; but he could breathe, and see. His heart beat un-self-consciously. 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 Graveller 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 Graveller 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 Graveller 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 ploughed 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?”

Covenant turned toward Linden to ask her what she saw in the sun's green. Her face was slack and puffy, untouched by Sunder's excitement; she was pushing herself too hard, demanding too much of her worn spirit. And her eyes were dull, as if she were being blinded by the things she saw-essential things neither Covenant nor Sunder could discern.

He started to frame a question; but then the sunshine snatched his attention away. He gaped at the west bank.

The light had moved partway down the side of the watercourse. And wherever it touched soil, new-green sprouts and shoots thrust into view.

They grew with visible rapidity. Above the rim of the river, a few bushes raised their heads high enough to be seen. Green spread downward like a mantle, following the sun-line cast by the east wall; plants seemed to scurry out of the dirt. More bush tops appeared beyond the bank. Here and there, young saplings reached toward the sky. Wherever the anademed sunlight fell, the wasteland of the past three days became smothered by verdure.

“The fertile sun,” Sunder breathed gladly. “None can say when it will rise. But when it rises, it brings life to the Land.”

“Impossible,” Covenant whispered. He kept blinking his eyes, unconsciously trying to clear his sight, kept staring at the way grass and vines came teeming down the riverbank, at the straight new trees which were already showing themselves beyond the shrubs along the river's edge. The effect was eldritch, and frightening. It violated his instinctive sense of Law, “Impossible.”

“Forsooth,” chuckled the Graveller. He seemed new-made by the sun. “Do your eyes lack credence? Surely you must now acknowledge that there is truth in the Sunbane.”

“Truth-?” Covenant hardly heard Sunder. He was absorbed in his own amazement. “There's still Earthpower-that's obvious. But it was never like this.” He felt an intuitive chill of danger. “What's wrong with the Law?” Was that it? Had Foul found some way to destroy the Law itself? The Law?

“Often,” Sunder said, “Nassic my father sang of Law. But he did not know its import. What is Law?”

Covenant stared sightlessly at the Graveller. “The Law of Earthpower.” Fearsome speculations clogged his throat; dread rotted his guts. “The natural order. Seasons. Weather. Growth and decay. What happened to it? What has he done?”

Sunder frowned as if Covenant's attitude were a denial of his gladness. “I know nothing of such matters. The Sunbane I know-and the Rede which the na-Mhoram has given us for our survival. But seasons — Law. These words have no meaning.”

No meaning, Covenant groaned. No, of course not. If there were no Law, if there had been no Law for centuries, the Stonedownor could not possibly understand. Impulsively, he turned to Linden. “Tell him what you see.”

She appeared not to hear him. She stood at the side of the rock, wearing an aspect of defenceless hebetude.

“Linden!” he cried, driven by his mortal apprehension. “Tell him what you see.”

Her mouth twisted as if his demand were an act of brutality. She pushed her hands through her hair, glanced up at the green-wreathed sun, then at the green-thick bank.

Shuddering, she permitted herself to see.

Her revulsion was all the answer Covenant needed. It struck him like an instant of shared vision, momentarily gifting or blighting his senses with the acuity they lacked. Suddenly, the long grass and curling vines, the thick bushes, the saplings no longer seemed lush to him. Instead, they looked frenetic, hysterical. They did not spring with spontaneous luxuriance out of the soil; they were forced to grow by the unnatural scourge of the sun. The trees clawed toward the sky like drowners; the creepers writhed along the ground as if they lay on coals; the grass grew as raw and immediate as a shriek.

The moment passed, leaving him shaken.

“It's wrong.” Linden rubbed her arms as if what she saw made her skin itch like an infestation of lice. The redness of her sunburn aggravated all her features. “Sick. Evil. It's not supposed to be like this. It's killing me.” Abruptly, she sat down, hid her face in her hands. Her shoulders clenched as if she did not dare to weep.

Covenant started to ask, Killing you? But Sunder was already shouting.

“Your words signify nothing! This is the fertile sun! It is not wrong. It simply is. Thus the Sunbane has been since the punishment began. Behold!”

He stabbed a gesture toward the sandy patch in which he had planted his seeds. The sun-line lay across one of his furrows. In the light, ussusimiel were sprouting.

"Because of this, we will have food! The fertile sun gives life to all the Land. In Mithil Stonedown-now, while you stand thus decrying wrong and ill-every man, woman, and child sings. All who have strength are at labour. While the fertile sun holds, they will labour until they fall from weariness. Searching first to discover places where the soil is of a kind to support crops, then striving to clear that ground so seeds may be planted. Thrice in this one day, crops will be planted and harvested, thrice each day of the fertile sun.

“And if people from another Stonedown come upon this place, seeking proper soil for themselves, then there will be killing until one Stonedown is left to tend the crops. And the people will sing! The fertile sun is life! It is fiber for rope and thread and cloth, wood for tools and vessels and fire, grab for food, and for the metheglin which heals weariness. Speak not to me of wrong!” he cried thickly. But then his passion sagged, leaving him stooped and sorrowful. His arms hung at his sides as if in betraying his home he had given up all solace. “I cannot bear it.”

“Sunder.” Covenant's voice shook. How much longer could he endure being the cause of so much pain? “That isn't what I meant.”

“Then enlighten me,” the Graveller muttered. “Comfort the poverty of my comprehension.”

“I'm trying to understand your life. You endure so much-just being able to sing is a victory. But that isn't what I meant.” He gripped himself so that his anger would not misdirect itself at Sunder. “This isn't a punishment. The people of the Land aren't criminals-betrayers. No!” I have been preparing retribution. "Your lives aren't wrong. The Sunbane is wrong. It's an evil that's being done to the Land. I don't know how. But I know who's responsible. Lord Foul — you call him a-Jeroth. It's his doing.

“Sunder, he can be fought. Listen to me.” He appealed to the scowling Graveller. “He can be fought.”

Sunder glared at Covenant, clinging to ideas, perceptions, he could understand. But after a moment he dropped his gaze. When he spoke, his words were a recognition. “The fertile sun is also perilous, in its way. Remain upon the safety of the rock while you may.” With his knife, he went to clean away grass and weeds from around his vines.

Ah, Sunder, Covenant sighed. You're braver than I deserve.

He wanted to rest, Fatigue made the bones of his skull hurt. The swelling of his forearm was gone now; but the flesh was still deeply bruised, and the joints of his elbow and wrist ached. But he held himself upright, turned to face Linden's mute distress.

She sat staring emptily at nothing. Pain dragged her mouth into lines of failure, acutely personal and forlorn. Her hands gripped her elbows, hugging her knees, as if she strove to anchor herself on the stiff mortality of her bones.

Looking at her, he thought he recognized his own first ordeals in the Land. He made an effort to speak gently. “It's all right. I understand.”

He meant to add, Don't let it overwhelm you. You're not alone. There are reasons for all this. But her reply stopped him. “No, you don't.” She did not have even enough conviction for bitterness. “You can't see.”

He had no answer. The flat truth of her words denied his empathy, left him groping within himself as if he had lost all his fingers. Defenceless against his incapacity, his responsibility for burdens he was unable to carry, he sank to the stone, stretched out his tiredness. She was here because she had tried to save his life. He yearned to give her something in return, some help, protection, ease. Some answer to her own severity. But there was nothing he could do. He could not even keep his eyes open.

When he looked up again, the growth on both sides of the watercourse, and down the west bank to the edge of the rock, had become alarmingly dense. Some of the grass was already knee-deep. He wondered how it would be possible to travel under such a sun. But he left that question to Sunder.

While melon buds ripened on his vines, the Graveller occupied himself by foraging for wild creepers. These he cut into strands. When he was satisfied with what he had gathered, he returned to the rock, and began knotting and weaving the vines to form a mesh sack.

By the time he had finished this chore, the first of the ussusimiel were ripe. He sectioned them, stored the seeds in his pocket, then meted out rations to his companions. Covenant accepted his share deliberately, knowing his body's need for aliment. But Sunder had to nudge Linden's shoulder to gain her attention. She frowned at the ussusimiel as if it were unconscionable, received it with a look of gall.

When they had eaten, Sunder picked the rest of the melons and put them in his sack. He appeared to be in a lighter mood; perhaps his ability to provide food had strengthened his sense of how much he was needed; or perhaps he was now less afraid of pursuit. Firmly, he announced, “We must leave the riverbed. We will find no water here.” He nodded toward the east bank. “At first it will be arduous. But as the trees mount, they will shade the ground, slowing the undergrowth. But mark me-I have said that the fertile sun is perilous. We must travel warily, lest we fall among plants which will not release us. While this sun holds, we will sojourn in daylight, sleeping only at night.”

Covenant rubbed lightly at the scabs on his forearm, eyed the rim of the bank. “Did you say water?”

“As swiftly as strength and chance permit.”

Strength, Covenant muttered. Chance. He lacked one, and did not trust the other. But he did not hesitate. “Let's go.”

Both men looked at Linden.

She rose slowly to her feet. She did not raise her eyes; but she nodded mutely.

Sunder glanced a question at Covenant; but Covenant had no answer. With a shrug, the Graveller lifted his sack to his shoulder and started down the river bottom. Covenant followed, with Linden behind him.

Sunder avoided the grass and weeds as much as possible until he reached a place where the sides were less steep. There he dug his feet into the dirt, and scrambled upward.

He had to burrow through the underbrush which lipped the slope to gain level ground. Covenant watched until the Graveller disappeared, then attempted the climb himself. Handholds on long dangling clumps of grass aided his ascent. After a moment of slippage, he crawled into Sunder's burrow.

Carefully, he moved along the tunnel of bracken and brush which Sunder had brunted clear. The teeming vegetation made progress difficult; he could not rise above his hands and knees. He felt enclosed by incondign verdancy, a savage ecstasy of growth more insidious than walls, and more stifling. He could not control the shudders of his muscles.

Crawling threatened to exhaust him; but after some distance, the tunnel ended. Sunder had found an area where the bracken was only waist-high, shaded by a crowded young copse of wattle. He was stamping down the brush to make a clearing when Covenant and then Linden caught up with him.

“We are fortunate,” Sunder murmured, nodding toward one of the nearest trees. It was a new mimosa nearly fifteen feet tall; but it would not grow any more; it was being strangled by a heavy creeper as thick as Covenant's thigh. This plant had a glossy green skin, and it bore a cluster of yellow-green fruit which vaguely resembled papaya. “It is mirkfruit.”

Mirkfruit? Covenant wondered, remembering the narcoleptic pulp with which he and Linden had been captured by Mithil Stonedown. “How is that fortunate?”

Sunder took out his knife. “The fruit is one matter, the vine another.” Drawing Covenant with him, he stepped toward the creeper, gripped his poniard in both hands. “Stand ready,” he warned. Then he leaped upward and spiked his blade into the plant above the level of his head.

The knife cut the vine like flesh. When Sunder snatched back his blade, clear water gushed from the wound.

In his surprise, Covenant hesitated.

“Drink!” snapped Sunder. Brusquely, he thrust Covenant under the spout.

Then Covenant was gulping at water that splashed into his face and mouth. It was as fresh as night air.

When he had satisfied his body's taut thirst, Linden took his place, drank as if she were frantic for something, anything, which did not exacerbate the soreness of her nerves. Covenant feared the vine would run dry. But after she stepped aside, Sunder was able to drink his fill before the stream began to slacken.

While the water lasted, the companions used it to wash their hands and faces, sluice some of the dust from then-clothes. Then the Graveller shouldered his sack. “We must continue. Nothing motionless is free of hazard under this sun.” To demonstrate his point, he kicked his feet, showed how the grass tried to wind around his ankles. “And the Rider will be abroad. We will journey as near the Mithil as soil and sun allow.”

He gestured northward. In that direction, beyond the shade of the copse, lay a broad swath of raw grey grass, chest-high and growing. But then the grass faded into a stand of trees, an incongruous aggregation of oak and sycamore, eucalyptus and jacaranda. “There is great diversity in the soil,” Sunder explained, “and the soil grows what is proper to it. I cannot foresee what we will encounter. But we will strive to stay among trees and shade.” Scanning the area as if he expected to see signs of the Rider, he began to breast his way through the thick grass.

Covenant followed unsteadily, with Linden at his back.

By the time they neared the trees, his arms were latticed with fine scratches from the rough blades; and the grass itself waved above his head.

But later, as Sunder had predicted, the shade of the trees held the undergrowth to more natural proportions. And these trees led to a woodland even more heavily shadowed by cypress, flowering mulberry, and a maple-like tree with yellow leaves which Covenant recognized poignantly as Gilden. The sight of these stately trees, which the people of the Land had once treasured so highly, now being grown like puppets by the Sunbane, made ire pound like vertigo in the bones of his forehead.

He turned to share his outrage with Linden. But she was consumed by her own needs, and did not notice him. Her gaze was haunted by misery; her eyes seemed to wince away from everything around her, as if she could not blind herself to the screaming of the trees. Neither she nor Covenant had any choice but to keep moving.

Shortly after noon, Sunder halted in a bower under a dense willow. There the companions ate a meal of ussusimiel. Then, half a league farther on, they came across another mirkfruit creeper. These things sustained Covenant against his convalescent weakness. Nevertheless, he reached the end of his stamina by mid-afternoon. Finally, he dropped to the ground, allowed himself to lie still. All his muscles felt like mud; his head wore a vice of fatigue that constricted his sight and balance. “That's enough,” he mumbled. “I've got to rest.”

“You cannot,” the Graveller said. He sounded distant. “Not until the sun's setting-or until we have found barren ground.”

“He has to,” panted Linden. “He hasn't got his strength back. He still has that poison in him. He could relapse.”

After a moment, Sunder muttered, “Very well. Remain with him-ward him. I will search for a place of safety.” Covenant heard the Graveller stalking away through the brush.

Impelled by Sunder's warning, Covenant crawled to the shade of a broad Gilden trunk, seated himself against the bark. For a short time, he closed his eyes, floated away along the wide rolling of his weariness.

Linden brought him back to himself. She must have been tired, but she could not rest. She paced back and forth in front of him, gripping her elbows with her hands, shaking her head as if she were arguing bitterly with herself. He watched for a moment, tried to squeeze the fatigue from his sight. Then he said carefully, “Tell me what's the matter.”

“That's the worst.” His request triggered words out of her; but she replied to herself rather than to him. “It's all terrible, but that's the worst. What kind of tree is that?” She indicated the trunk against which he sat.

“It's called a Gilden.” Spurred by memories, he added, “The wood used to be considered very special.”

“It's the worst.” Her pacing tightened. “Everything's hurt. In such pain-” Tremors began to scale upward in her voice. “But that's the worst. All the Gilden. They're on fire inside. Like an auto-da-fe.” Her hands sprang to cover the distress on her face. “They ought to be put out of their misery.”

Put out of-? The thought frightened him. Like Sunder's mother? “Linden,” he said warily, “tell me what's the matter.”

She spun on him in sudden rage. “Are you deaf as well as blind? Can't you feel anything? I said they're in pain! They ought to be put out of their misery!”

“No.” He faced her fury without blinking. That's what Kevin did. The Land's need broke his heart. So he invoked the Ritual of Desecration, trying to extirpate evil by destroying what he loved. Covenant winced to remember how close he had come to walking that path himself. “You can't fight Lord Foul that way. That's just what he wants.”

“Don't tell me that!” she spat at him. “I don't want to hear it. You're a leper. Why should you care about pain? Let the whole world scream! It won't make any difference to you.” Abruptly, she flung herself to the ground, sat against a tree with her knees raised to her chest. “I can't take any more.” Suppressed weeping knurled her face. She bowed her head, sat with her arms outstretched and rigid across her knees. Her hands curled into fists, clinging futilely to thin air. “I can't.”

The sight of her wrung his heart. “Please,” he breathed. “Tell me why this hurts you so much.”

“I can't shut it out.” Hands, arms, shoulders-every part of her was clenched into a rictus of damned and demanding passion. “It's all happening to me. I can see-feel- the trees. In me. It's too-personal. I can't take it. It's killing me.”

Covenant wanted to touch her, but did not dare. She was too vulnerable. Perhaps she would be able to feel leprosy in the contact of his fingers. For a moment, he grappled with a desire to tell her about Kevin. But she might hear that story as a denial of her pain. Yet he had to offer her something.

“Linden,” he said, groaning inwardly at the arduousness of what he meant to say, 'when he summoned us here, Foul spoke to me. You didn't hear him. I'm going to tell you what he said. '

Her hands writhed; but she made no other reply. After a difficult moment, he began to repeat the Despiser's cold scorn.

Ah, you are stubborn yet.

He remembered every word of it, every drop of venom, every infliction of contempt. The memory came upon him like a geas, overwhelming his revulsion, numbing his heart. Yet he did not try to stop. He wanted her to hear it all. Since he could not ease her, he tried to share his sense of purpose.

You will be the instrument of my victory.

As the words fell on her, she coiled into herself-curled her arms around her knees, buried her face against them-shrank from what he was saying like a child in terror.

There is despair laid up for you here beyond anything your petty mortal heart can bear.

Yet throughout his recitation he felt that she hardly heard him, that her reaction was private, an implication of things he did not know about her. He half expected her to break out in keening. She seemed so bereft of the simple instinct for solace. She could have sustained herself with anger at the Despiser, as he did; but such an outlet seemed to have no bearing on her complex anguish. She sat folded trembling into herself, and made no sound.

Finally, he could no longer endure watching her. He crawled forward as if he were damning himself, and sat beside her. Firmly, he pried her right hand loose from its clinch, placed his halfhand in her grip so that she could not let go of his maimed humanity unless she released her hold on herself. “Lepers aren't numb,” he said softly. “Only the body gets numb. The rest compensates. I want to help you, and I don't know how.” Through the words, he breathed, Don't hurt yourself like this.

Somehow, the touch of his hand, or the empathy in his voice, reached her. As if by a supreme act of will, she began to relax her muscles, undo the knots of her distress. She drew a shuddering breath, let her shoulders sag. But still she clung to his hand, held the place of his lost fingers as if that amputation were the only part of him she could understand.

“I don't believe in evil.” Her voice seemed to scrape through her throat, come out smeared with blood. “People aren't like that. This place is sick. Lord Foul is just something you made up. If you can blame sickness on somebody, instead of accepting it for what it is, then you can avoid being responsible for it. You don't have to try to end the pain.” Her words were an accusation; but her grip on his hand contradicted it. “Even if this is a dream.”

Covenant could not answer. If she refused to admit the existence of her own inner Despiser, how could he persuade her? And how could he try to defend her against Lord Foul's manipulations? When she abruptly disengaged her hand, rose to her feet as if to escape the implications of his grasp, he gazed after her with an ache of loneliness indistinguishable from fear in his heart.

Nine: River-ride

A SHORT time later, Sunder returned. If he noticed Linden's tension as she stood there pale and absolute with her back to Covenant, he did not ask for any explanation. Quietly, he announced that he had found a place where they could rest safely until the next morning. Then he offered Covenant his hand.

Covenant accepted the help, let himself be pulled to his feet. His muscles felt like ashes in his limbs; but by leaning on Sunder's shoulder he was able to travel another half a league to reach a stretch of rock. It was hidden among high brush, which provided at least some protection against discovery. Reclining on the rough stone, Covenant went to sleep for the remainder of the afternoon. After a supper of ussusimiel, he surprised himself by sleeping throughout the night.

In spite of the hardness of his bed, he did not awaken until shortly after sunrise. By that time, Sunder had already cleared a patch of ground and planted a new crop of melons.

When Covenant arose, Linden joined him. Avoiding his gaze as if she could not tolerate the sight of his thoughts, his concern for her, his countervailing beliefs, she examined him mutely, then pronounced him free of fever, fit to travel. Something she saw disturbed her, but she did not say what it was, and he did not ask.

As soon as Sunder's new crop was ripe, he replenished his stock of seeds and refilled his sack of melons. Then he led Covenant and Linden away into the brush.

The Mithil River had turned toward the northwest, and they continued to follow its course as closely as the terrain permitted. Initially, their progress was slow; their way traversed a tangle of ground-ivy which threatened to baffle even the Graveller's strength. But beyond the ivy they entered a deep forest of banyan trees, and walking became easier.

The second day of the fertile sun raised the banyans to heights far beyond anything Covenant would have believed possible. Huge avenues and galleries lay between the trunks; the prodigious intergrown branches arched and stretched like the high groined ceiling and towering pillars of a place of reverence in Revelstone-or like the grand cavern of Earthroot under Melenkurion Skyweir. But the effect was ominous rather than grand. Every bough and trunk seemed to be suffering under its own weight.

Several times, Covenant thought he heard a rumble of hooves in the distance, though he saw nothing.

The next day, the companions met some of the consequences of the sun's necrotic fecundity. By mid-morning, they found themselves struggling through an area which, just the day before, had been a stand of cedars many hundreds of feet tall. But now it looked like the scene of a holocaust.

Sometime during the night, the trees had started to topple; and each falling colossus had chopped down others. Now the entire region was a chaos of broken timber-trunks and branches titanically rent, splintered, crushed. The three companions spent the whole day wrestling with the ruins.

Near sunset, they won through to a low hillside of heather, seething in the breeze and twice their height. Sunder attacked the wrist-thick stems with his poniard, and eventually succeeded in clearing an area large enough for them to lie down. But even then he could not rest; he was taut with anxiety. While they ate, Covenant made no comment; and Linden, wrapped in her privacy, seemed unaware of the Graveller. But later Covenant asked him what troubled him.

Grimly, Sunder replied, “I have found no stone. The moon wanes, and will not penetrate this heather sufficiently to aid my search. I know not how to avoid Marid's fate.”

Covenant considered for a moment, then said, I’ll carry you. If I'm protected, you ought to be safe, too."

The Graveller acceded with a stiff shrug. But still he did not relax. Covenant's suggestion violated a lifetime of ingrained caution. Quietly, Covenant said, “I think you'll be all right. I was right about the aliantha, wasn't I?”

Sunder responded by settling himself for sleep. But when Covenant awakened briefly during the night and looked about him, he saw the Graveller staring up into the darkness of the heather like a man bidding farewell to the use of his eyes.

The companions rose in the early grey of dawn. Together, they moved through the heather until they found a thinning through which they could glimpse the eastern horizon. The breeze had become stronger and cooler since the previous evening. Covenant felt a low chill of apprehension. Perhaps he and Linden had not been protected by their footwear; perhaps they were naturally immune to the Sunbane. In that case-

They had no time to search for alternatives. Sunrise was imminent. Linden took the sack of melons. Covenant stooped to let Sunder mount his back. Then they faced the east. Covenant had to compel himself not to hold his breath.

The sun came up flaring azure, blue-clad in an aura of sapphire.

It shone for only a moment. Then black clouds began to roll westward like the vanguard of an attack.

“The sun of rain.” With an effort, Sunder ungnarled his fingers from Covenant's shoulders and dropped to the ground. “Now,” he rasped against the constriction of his chest, “we will at last begin to travel with some swiftness. If we do not foil pursuit altogether, we will at least prolong our lives.”

At once, he turned toward the River, started plunging hurriedly through the heather as if he were racing the clouds.

Covenant faced Linden across the rising wind. “Is he all right?”

“Yes,” she replied impatiently. “Our shoes block the Sunbane.” When he nodded his relief, she hastened after Sunder.

The heather spread westward for some distance, then changed abruptly into a thicket of knaggy bushes as tall as trees along the riverbank. The clouds were overhead, and a few raindrops had begun to spatter out of the sky, as Sunder forged into the high brush. While he moved, he hacked or broke off stout branches nearly eight feet along, cut loose long sections of creeper. These he dragged with him through the thicket. When he had collected all he could manage, he gave the branches and vines to his companions, then gathered more wood of the same length.

By the time they came in sight of the riverbed, only a small strip of sky remained clear in the west.

Sunder pressed forward to the edge of the bank. There he prepared a space in which he could work. Obeying his terse orders, though they did not know what he had in mind, Covenant and Linden helped him strip his vines and branches of twigs and leaves. Then they put all the wood together lengthwise, and Sunder lashed it into a secure bundle with the vines. When he was done, he had a tight stack thicker than the reach of his arms.

Wind began to rip the top of the thicket. Heavy drops slapped against the leaves, producing a steady drizzle within the brush. But Sunder appeared to have forgotten his haste. He sat down and did what he could to make himself comfortable.

After a moment, Covenant asked, “Now what?”

Sunder looked at him, at Linden. “Are you able to swim?”

They both nodded.

“Then we will await the rising of the River.”

Covenant blinked the water out of his eyes. Damnation, he muttered. A raft.

The idea was a good one. The current of the Mithil would provide a faster pace than anything they could hope to match by travelling overland. And Sunder's raft would give them something to hold onto so that they did not exhaust themselves. The Graveller had been in such a hurry because the chore of making even this small raft would have been far more difficult under the full weight of the rain. Covenant nodded to himself. Sunder was a more resourceful guide than he deserved.

Linden seated herself near the raft and folded her arms over her knees. In a flat voice, she said, “It's going to be cold.”

That was true; the rain was already chilly. But Covenant ignored it, moved to look down into the river bottom.

The sight made him dubious. The bed was choked with growth almost to the level of the rim. He did not know how long the water would take to rise; but when it did, the trees and brush would make it extremely hazardous.

As Sunder handed out rations of ussusimiel, Covenant continued studying the watercourse. The downpour was hard and flat now, beating into the brush as steadily as a waterfall, and the air darkened gradually; but he could see well enough to make out the first muddy stirrings of the River. Initially, he feared that the water would rise too slowly. But the thicket had caused him to underestimate the force of the storm. The torrents fell heavily-and more heavily moment by moment. The rain sounded like a great beast thrashing in the brush.

The water began to run more rapidly. Moiling like a current of snakes, the stream slipped between the trees, rushed slapping and gurgling through the shrubs. All this region of the South Plains drained into the watercourse. Covenant had barely finished his meal when a sudden change came over the flow. Without warning, the current seemed to leap upward, forward, like a pouncing predator; and some of the bushes shifted.

They were shallow-rooted. The stream tugged them free. They caught promptly in the limbs of the trees, hung there like desperation in the coils of the current. But the water built up against them. The trees themselves started to topple.

Soon uprooted trunks and branches thronged the River, beating irresistibly downstream. The water seethed with the force of an avalanche. Rain crashed into the Mithil, and it rose and ran avidly. Foot by foot, it swept itself clean.

The current was more than halfway up the banks when Sunder got to his feet. He spent a moment ensuring that his few possessions were secure, then stooped to the raft, lashed the sack of melons tightly to the wood.

A spasm of fear twisted Covenant's chest. “It's too dangerous!” he shouted through the noise of the rain. “We'll be battered to pieces!” I'm a leper!

“No!” Sunder returned. “We will ride with the current-with the trees! If the hazard surpasses you, we must wait! The River will not run clear until the morrow!”

Covenant thought about the Rider, about beings he had encountered who could sense the presence of white gold. Before he could respond, Linden barked, “I'll go crazy if I have to spend my time sitting here!”

Sunder picked up one end of the raft. “Cling to the wood, lest we become lost to each other!”

At once, she bent to the other end of the bundle, locked her hands among the branches, lifted them.

Cursing silently, Covenant placed himself beside her and tried to grip the wet branches. The numbness of his fingers threatened to betray him; he could not be sure of his hold.

“We must move as one!” Sunder warned. “Out into the centre!”

Covenant growled his understanding. He wanted to pause for a VSE. The watercourse looked like an abyss to his ready vertigo.

The next moment, Sunder yelled, “Now!” and hurled himself toward the edge.

Hellfire! The raft yanked at Covenant as Sunder and Linden heaved it forward. He lurched into motion.

Sunder sprang for the water. The raft dove over the bank. Covenant's grip tore him headlong past the edge. With a shattering jolt, he smashed into the water.

The impact snatched his inadequate fingers from the raft. The Mithil swept him away and down. He whirled tumbling along the current, lost himself in turbulence and suffocation. An instant of panic made his brain as dark as the water. He flailed about him without knowing how to find the surface.

Then a bush still clinched to its roots struck his leg a stinging blow. It righted him. He clawed upward.

With a gasp that made no sound, he broke water.

Amid the tumult of the rain, he was deaf to everything except air and fear, the current shoving at his face, and the gelid fire of the water. The cold stunned his mind.

But a frantic voice was howling, “Covenant!”

The urgency of Linden's cry reached him. Fighting the drag of his boots, he surged head and shoulders out of the racing boil, scanned the darkness.

Before he plunged underwater again, he caught a glimpse of the raft.

It was nearby, ten feet farther downriver. As he regained the surface, he struck out along the current.

An arm groped for him. He kicked forward, grabbed at Linden's wrist with his half-hand. His numb fingers could not hold. Water closed over his head.

Her hand clamped onto his forearm, heaved him toward the raft. He grappled for one of the branches and managed to fasten himself to the rough bark.

His weight upset Sunder's control of the raft. The bundle began to spin. Covenant had an impression of perilous speed. The riverbanks were only a vague looming; they seethed past him as he hurtled along the watercourse.

“Are you all right?” Linden shouted.

“Yes!”

Together, they battled the cold water, helped Sunder right the raft's plunging.

The rain deluged them, rendered them blind and mute. The current wrestled constantly for mastery of the raft. Repeatedly, they had to thrash their way out of vicious backwaters and fend off trees which came beating down the River like triremes. Only the width of the Mithil prevented logjams from developing at every bend.

And the water was cold. It seemed to suck at their muscles, draining their strength and warmth. Covenant felt as if his bones were being filled with ice. Soon he could hardly keep his head above water, hardly hold onto the wood.

But as the River rose, its surface gradually grew less turbulent. The current did not slow; but the increase of water blunted the moiling effect of the uneven bottom and banks. The raft became easier to manage. Then, at Sunder's instructions, the companions began to take turns riding prone on the raft while the other two steered, striving to delay the crisis of their exhaustion.

Later, the water became drinkable. It still left a layer of grit on Covenant's teeth; but rain and runoff slowly macerated the mud, clarifying the Mithil.

He began to hear an occasional dull booming like the sounds of battle. It was not thunder; no lightning accompanied it. Yet it broke through the loud water-sizzle of the rain.

Without warning, a sharp splintering rent the air. A monstrous shadow hove above him. At the last instant, the current rushed the raft out from under the fall of an immense tree. Too tall for its roots, overburdened by the weight of the storm, the tree had riven its moorings and toppled across the River.

Now Covenant heard the same rending everywhere, near and far. The Mithil traversed a region of megalithic trees; the clamour of their destruction broke and boomed incessantly.

He feared that one of them would strike the raft or dam the River. But that did not happen. The trees which landed in the Mithil occluded the current without blocking it. And then the noise of their ruin receded as the River left that region behind.

Rain continued to fall like the collapse of the sky. Covenant placed himself at one end of the raft and used the weight of his boots to steady its course. Half paralyzed with cold, he and his companions rode through a day that seemed to have no measure and no end. When the rain began to dwindle, that fact could not penetrate his dogged stupor. As the clouds rolled back from the east, uncovering the clear heavens of evening, he gaped at the open air as if it spoke a language which had become alien to him.

Together, the companions flopped like dying fish to the riverbank, crawled out of the water. Somehow, Sunder mustered the strength to secure the raft against the rising of the River. Then he joined Covenant and Linden in the wind-shelter of a copse of preternatural gorse, and slumped to the ground. The teeming black clouds slid away to the west; and the sun set, glorious with orange and red. The gloaming thickened toward night.

“Fire.” Linden's voice quivered; she was trembling from head to foot. “We've got to have a fire.”

Covenant groaned his mind out of the mud on which he lay, raised his head. Long vibrations of cold ran through him; shivers knotted his muscles. The sun had not shone on the Plains all day and the night was as clear as perfect ice.

“Yes,” Sunder said through locked teeth. “We must have fire.”

Fire. Covenant winced to himself. He was too cold to feel anything except dread. But the need was absolute. And he could not bear to think of blood. To forestall the Graveller, he struggled to his hands and knees, though his bones seemed to clatter together. I’ll do it"

They faced each other. The silence between them was marked only by the chill breeze rubbing its way through the copse, and by the clenched shudder of breathing. Sunder's expression showed that he did not trust Covenant's strength, did not want to set aside his responsibility for his companions. But Covenant kept repeating inwardly, You're not going to cut yourself for me, and did not relent. After a moment, Sunder handed him the orcrest.

Covenant accepted it with his trembling half-hand, placed it in contact with his ring, glared at it weakly. But then he faltered. Even in ten years, he had not been able to unlearn his instinctive fear of power.

“Hurry,” Linden whispered.

Hurry? He covered his face with his left hand, striving to hide his ague. Bloody hell. He lacked the strength. The orcrest lay inert in his fist; he could not even concentrate on it. You don't know what you're asking.

But the need was indefeasible. His anger slowly tightened. He became rigid, clenched against the chills. Ire indistinguishable from pain or exhaustion shaped itself to the circle of his ring. The Sunstone had no life; the white gold had no life. He gave them his life. There was no other answer.

Cursing silently, he hammered his fist at the mud.

White light burst in the orcrest: flame sprang from his ring as if the metal were a band of silver magma. In an instant, his whole hand was ablaze.

He raised his fist, brandished fire like a promise of retribution against the Sunbane. Then he dropped the Sunstone. It went out; but his ring continued to spout flame. In a choking voice, he gasped, “Sunder!”

At once, the Graveller gave him a dead gorse-branch. He grasped the wet bark in his half-hand: his arm shook as he squeezed white flame into the wood. When he set it down, it was afire.

Sunder supplied more wood, then knelt to tend the weak fire. Covenant set flame to the second branch, to a third and fourth. Sunder fed the burning with leaves and twigs, blew carefully on the flames. After a moment, he announced, “It is enough.”

With a groan, Covenant let his mind fall blank, and the blaze of his ring plunged into darkness. Night closed over the copse, huddled around the faint yellow light and smoke of the fire.

Soon he began to feel heat on his face.

Sagging within himself, he tried to estimate the consequences of what he had done, measure the emotional umbrage of power.

Shortly, the Graveller recovered his sack of melons from the raft, and dealt out rations of ussusimiel. Covenant felt too empty to eat; but his body responded without his volition. He sat like an effigy, with wraiths of moisture curling upward from his clothes, and looked dumbly at the inanition of his soul.

When she finished her meal, Linden threw the rinds away. Staring into the flames, she said remotely, “I don't think I can take another day of this.”

“Is there choice?” Fatigue dulled Sunder's eyes. He sat close to the heat, as if his bones were thirsty for warmth. “The ur-Lord aims toward Revelstone. Very well. But the distance is great. Refusing the aid of the River, we must journey afoot. To gain the Keep of the na-Mhoram would require many turnings of the moon. But I fear we would not gain it. The Sunbane is too perilous. And there is the matter of pursuit.”

The set of Linden's shoulders showed her apprehension. After a moment, she asked tightly, “How much longer?”

The Graveller sighed. “None can foretell the Sunbane,” he said in a dun voice. “It is said that in generations past each new sun shone for five and six, even as many as seven days. But a sun of four days is now uncommon. And with my own eyes I have beheld only one sun of less than three.”

“Two more days,” Linden muttered. “Dear God.”

For a while, they were silent. Then, by tacit agreement, they both arose to gather wood for the fire. Scouring the copse, they collected a substantial pile of brush and branches. After that, Sunder stretched out on the ground. But Linden remained sitting beside the fire. Slowly, Covenant noticed through his numbness that she was studying him.

In a tone that seemed deliberately inflectionless, she asked, “Why does it bother you to use your ring?”

His ague had abated, leaving only a vestigial chill along his bones. But his thoughts were echoes of anger. “It's hard.”

“In what way?” In spite of its severity, her expression said that she wanted to understand. Perhaps she needed to understand. He read in her a long history of self-punishment. She was a physician who tormented herself in order to heal others, as if the connection between the two were essential and compulsory.

To the complexity of her question, he gave the simplest answer he knew. “Morally.”

For a moment, they regarded each other, tried to define each other. Then, unexpectedly, the Graveller spoke. “There at last, ur-Lord,” he murmured, “you have uttered a word which lies within my comprehension.” His voice seemed to arise from the wet wood and the flames. "You fear both strength and weakness, both power and lack of power. You fear to be in need-and to have your need answered. As do I.

“I am a Graveller — well acquainted with such fear. A Stonedown trusts the Graveller for its life. But in the name of that life, that trust, he must shed the blood of his people. Those who trust must be sacrificed to meet the trust. Thus trust becomes a matter of blood and death. Therefore I have fled my home”- the simple timbre of lament in his tone relieved what he said of any accusation — “to serve a man and a woman whom I cannot trust. I know not how to trust you, and so I am freed of the burden of trust. There is naught between us which would require me to shed your lives. Or to sacrifice my own.”

Listening to Sunder's voice and the fire, Covenant lost some of his fear. A sense of kinship came over him. This dour self-doubting Stonedownor had suffered so much, and yet had preserved so much of himself. After a long moment, Covenant chose to accept what Sunder was saying. He could not pay every price alone. “All right,” he breathed like the night breeze in the copse. “Tomorrow night you can start the fire.”

Quietly, Sunder replied, “That is well.”

Covenant nodded. Soon he closed his eyes. His weariness lowered him to the ground beside the fire. He wanted to sleep.

But Linden held his attention. “It isn't enough,” she said stiffly. “You keep saying you want to fight the Sunbane, but you can hardly light a fire. You might as well be afraid of rubbing sticks together. I need a better answer than that”

He understood her point. Surely the Sunbane-capable of torturing nature itself at its whim-could not be abrogated by anything as paltry as a white gold ring. He distrusted power because no power was ever enough to accomplish his heart's desires. To heal the world. Cure leprosy. Bridge the loneliness which thwarted his capacity for love. He made an effort not to sound harsh. “Then find one. Nobody else can do it for you.”

She did not respond. His words seemed to drive her back into her isolation. But he was too tired to contend with her. Already he had begun to fade. As she settled herself for the night, he rode the susurration of the River into sleep.

He awoke cramped and chilled beside a pile of dead embers. The stars had been effaced; and in the dawn, the rapid Mithil looked dark and cold, as fatal as sleet He did not believe he could survive another day in the water.

But, as Sunder had said, they had no choice. Shivering in dire anticipation, he awakened his companions. Linden looked pale and haggard, and her eyes avoided the River as if she could not bear to think about it. Together, they ate a scant breakfast, then stood on a boulder to face the dawn. As they had expected, the sun rose in a glow of blue, and menacing clouds began to pile out of the east. Sunder shrugged in resignation and went to retie his shrinking sack of melons to the raft

The companions launched the bundle of wood. The sting of the water burned Covenant's breath out of his lungs; but he fought the cold and the current and the weight of his boots with his old leper's intransigence, and survived the first shock.

Then the rain commenced. During the night, the River had become less violent; it had washed itself free of floating brush and trees and had risen above the worst of its turbulence. But the rain was more severe, had more wind behind it. Gusts drove the raindrops until they hit like flurries of hail. Torrents lashed into the water with a hot, scorching sound.

The downpour rapidly became torment for the companions. They could not escape from the sodden and insidious cold. From time to time, Covenant glimpsed a burst of lightning in the distance, rupturing the dark; but the unremitting slash of rain into the Mithil drowned out any thunder. Soon his muscles grew so leaden, his nerves so numb, that he could no longer grip the raft. He jammed his hand in among the branches, hooked his elbow over one of the bindings, and survived.

Somehow, the day passed. At last, a line of clear sky broke open along the east. Gradually, the rain and wind eased. More by chance than intent, the companions gained a small cove of gravel and sand in the west bank. As they drew their raft out of the water, Covenant's legs failed, and he collapsed face-down on the pebbles as if he would never be able to move again.

Linden panted, “Firewood.” He could hear the stumbling scrunch of her shoes. Sunder also seemed to be moving.

Her groan jerked up his head, heaved him to his hands and knees. Following her wounded stare, he saw what had dismayed her.

There was no firewood. The rain had washed the gravel clean. And the small patch of shore was impenetrably surrounded by a tangle of briar with long barbed thorns. Exhaustion and tears thickened her voice as she moaned, “What are we going to do?”

Covenant tried to speak, but was too weak to make any sound.

The Graveller locked his weary knees, mustered a scant smile. “The ur-Lord has granted permission. Be of good heart. Some little warmth will ease us greatly.”

Lurching to his feet, Covenant watched blankly as Sunder approached the thickest part of the briar.

The muscles of his jaw knotted and released irrhythmically, like a faltering heartbeat. But he did not hesitate. Reaching his left hand in among the thorns, he pressed his forearm against one of the barbs and tore a cut across his skin.

Covenant was too stunned by fatigue and cold and responsibility to react. Linden flinched, but did not move.

With a shudder, Sunder smeared the welling blood onto his hands and face, then took out his orcrest. Holding the Sunstone so that his cut dripped over it, he began to chant.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Covenant trembled in his bones, thinking that without sunlight Sunder would not be able to succeed. But suddenly a red glow awakened in the translucent stone. Power the colour of Sunder's blood shafted in the direction of the sun.

The sun had already set behind a line of hills, but the Sunstone was unaffected by the intervening terrain; Sunder's vermeil shaft struck toward the sun's hidden position. Some distance from the cove, the shaft disappeared into the dark base of the hills; but its straight, bright power was not hindered.

Still chanting, Sunder moved his hands so that the shaft encountered a thick briar stem. Almost at once, flame burst from the wood.

When the stem was well afire, he shifted his power to the nearest branches.

The briar was wet and alive; but his shaft lit new stems and twigs easily, and the tangle was so dense that the flames fed each other. Soon he had created a self-sustaining bonfire.

He fell silent; and the blood-beam vanished. Tottering weakly, he went to the River to wash himself and the Sunstone.

Covenant and Linden hunched close to the blaze. Twilight was deepening around them. At their backs, the Mithil sounded like the respiration of the sea. In the firelight, Covenant could see that her lips were blue with cold, her face drained of blood. Her eyes reflected the flames as if they were devoid of any other vision. Grimly, he hoped that she would find somewhere the desire or the resolution to endure.

Shortly, Sunder returned, carrying his sack of ussusimiel. Linden bestirred herself to tend his arm; but he declined quietly. “I am a Graveller,” he murmured. “Such work would not have fallen to me, were I slow of healing.” He raised his forearm, showed her that the bleeding had already stopped. Then he sat down near the flames, and began to prepare a ration of melons for supper.

The three of them ate in silence, settled themselves for the night in silence. Covenant was seeking within himself for the courage to face another day under the sun of rain. He guessed that his companions were doing the same. They wore their private needs like cerements, and slept in isolation.

The next day surpassed Covenant's worst expectations. As clouds sealed the Plains, the wind mounted to rabid proportions, Whipping the River into froth and flailing rain like the barbs of a scourge. Lightning and thunder bludgeoned each other across the heavens. In flashes, the sky became as lurid as the crumbling of a firmament, as loud as an avalanche. The raft rode the current like dead wood, entirely at the mercy of the Mithil.

Covenant thrashed and clung in constant fear of the lightning, expecting it to strike the raft, to fry him and his companions. But that killing blow never fell. Late in the day, the lightning itself granted them an unexpected reprieve. Downriver from them, a blue-white bolt sizzled into a stand of prodigious eucalyptus. One of the trees burned like a torch.

Sunder yelled at his companions. Together, they heaved the raft toward the bank, then left the River and hastened to the trees. They could not approach the burning eucalyptus; but when a blazing branch fell nearby, they used other dead wood to drag the branch out from under the danger of the tree. Then they fed brush, broken tree limbs, eucalyptus leaves as big as scythes, to the flames until the blaze was hot enough to resist the rain.

The burning tree and the campfire shed heat like a benediction. The ground was thick with leaves which formed the softest bed Covenant and his companions had had for days. Sometime after sunset, the tree collapsed, but it fell away from them; after that they were able to rest without concern.

Early in the dawn, Sunder roused Covenant and Linden so that they would have time to break their fast before the sun rose. The Graveller was tense and distracted, anticipating a change in the Sunbane. When they had eaten, they went down to the riverbank and found a stretch of fiat rock where they could stand to await the morning. Through the gaunt and blackened trees, they saw the sun cast its first glance over the horizon.

It appeared baleful, fiery and red; it wore coquelicot like a crown of thorns, and cast a humid heat entirely unlike the fierce intensity of the desert sun. Its corona seemed insidious and detrimental. Linden's eyes flinched at the sight. And Sunder's face was strangely blanched. He made an instinctive warding gesture with both hands. “Sun of pestilence,” he breathed; and his tone winced. “Ah, we have been fortunate. Had this sun come upon us after the desert sun, or the fertile-” The thought died in his throat. “But now, after a sun of rain-” He sighed. “Fortunate, indeed.”

“How so?” asked Covenant. He did not understand the attitude of his companions. His bones yearned for the relief of one clear clean day. “What does this sun do?”

“Do?” Sunder gritted. “What harm does it not? It is the dread and torment of the Land. Still water becomes stagnant. Growing things rot and crumble. All who eat or drink of that which has not been shaded are afflicted with a disease which few survive and none cure. And the insects-!”

“He's right,” Linden whispered with her mouth full of dismay, “Oh, my God.”

“It is the Mithil River which makes us fortunate, for it will not stagnate. Until another desert sun, it will continue to flow from its springs, and from the rain. And it will ward us in other ways also.” The reflected red in Sunder's eyes made him look like a cornered animal. “Yet I cannot behold such a sun without faintheartedness. My people hide in their homes at such a time and pray for a sun of two days. I ache to be hidden also. I am homeless and small against the wideness of the world, and in all the Land I fear a sun of pestilence more than any other thing.”

Sunder's frank apprehension affected Covenant like guilt. To answer it, he said, “You're also the only reason we're still alive.”

“Yes,” the Graveller responded as if he were listening to his own thoughts rather than to Covenant.

“Yes!” Covenant snapped. “And someday every Stonedown is going to know that this Sunbane is not the only way to live. When that day comes, you're going to be just about the only person in the Land who can teach them anything.”

Sunder was silent for a time. Then he asked distantly, “What will I teach them?”

“To remake the Land.” Deliberately, Covenant included Linden in his passion. “It used to be a place of such health and loveliness-if you saw it, it would break your heart.” His voice gave off gleams of rage and love. “That can be true again.” He glared at his companions, daring them to doubt him.

Linden covered her gaze; but Sunder turned and met Covenant's ire. “Your words have no meaning. No man or woman can remake the Land. It is in the hands of the Sunbane, for good or ill. Yet this I say to you,” he grated when Covenant began to protest. “Make the attempt.” Abruptly, he lowered his eyes. “I can no longer bear to believe that Nassic my father was a mere witless fool.” Retrieving his sack of melons, he went brusquely and tied it to the centre of the raft.

“I hear you,” Covenant muttered. He felt an unexpected desire for violence. “I hear you.”

Linden touched his arm. “Come on.” She did not meet his glance. “It's going to be dangerous here.”

He followed mutely as she and Sunder launched the raft.

Soon they were out in the centre of the Mithil, riding the current under a red-wreathed sun and a cerulean sky. The warmer air made the water almost pleasant; and the pace of the River had slowed during the night, easing the management of the raft. Yet the sun's aurora nagged at Covenant. Even to his superficial sight, it looked like a secret threat, mendacious and bloodthirsty. Because of it, the warm sunlight and clear sky seemed like concealment for an ambush.

His companions shared his trepidation. Sunder swam with a dogged wariness, as if he expected an attack at any moment. And Linden's manner betrayed an innominate anxiety more acute than anything she had shown since the first day of the fertile sun.

But nothing occurred to justify this vague dread. The morning passed easily as the water lost its chill. The air filled with flies, gnats, midges, like motes of vehemence in the red-tinged light; but such things did not prevent the companions from stopping whenever they saw aliantha. Slowly, Covenant began to relax. Noon had passed before he noticed that the River was becoming rougher.

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 centre 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 travelling north-eastward.

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 Centre Plains.”

“Yes,” said the Graveller. “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 Graveller'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 colour 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 rumour 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!”

Ten: Vale of Crystal

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 Graveller 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 Graveller 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 labour 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 centre 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 Graveller 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 Graveller'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.

She ate her ration, then did what she could to feed Covenant. The task was difficult; she had trouble making him swallow the thin morsels she put in his mouth. Again, dread constricted her heart. But she suppressed it. Patiently, she fed slivers of melon to him, then stroked his throat to trigger his swallowing reflex, until he had consumed a scant meal.

When she finished, the night was deep around her, and a waning moon had just begun to crest the hills. She rested beside Covenant for a while, trying to gather up the unravelled ends of her competence. But she found herself listening to his respiration as if she expected every hoarse intake to be his last. She loathed her helplessness so keenly-A distinct fetor rode the breeze from across the River, the effect of the sun of pestilence on the vegetation. She could not rest.

Abruptly, Covenant began to flinch. A faint white light winked along his right side-burned and vanished in an instant.

She sat up, hissed, “Sunder.”

The light came again-an evanescent stutter of power from the ring embedded deep in Covenant's swollen finger.

“Heaven and Earth!” whispered Sunder. “It will be seen.”

“I thought-” She watched stupidly as the Graveller slid Covenant's hand into the pocket of his pants. The movement made him bare his teeth in a grin of pain. His dry stare was fixed on the moon. “I thought he needed the Sunstone. To trigger it.” His pocket muffled the intermittent gleaming, but did not conceal it entirely. “Sunder.” Her doming was still damp; she could not stop shivering. “What's happening to him?”

“Ask me not,” Sunder breathed roughly. “I lack your sight.” But a moment later he inquired, “Can it be that this Raver of which he speaks-that this Raver is within him?”

“No!” she snapped, repudiating the idea so swiftly that she had no chance to control her vehemence. “He isn't Marid.” Her senses were certain of this; Covenant was ill, not possessed. Nevertheless, Sunder's suggestion struck chords of anger which took her by surprise. She had not realized that she was investing so much of herself in Thomas Covenant Back on Haven Farm, in the world she understood, she had chosen to support his embattled integrity, hoping to learn a lesson of strength. But she had had no conception of where that decision would carry her. She had already witnessed too much when she had watched him smile for Joan-smile, and forfeit his life. An inchoate part of her clung to this image of him; his self-sacrifice seemed so much cleaner than her own. Now, with a pang, she wondered how much more she had yet to comprehend about him. And about herself. Her voice shook. “Whatever else he is, he isn't a Raver.”

Sunder shifted in the darkness as if he were trying to frame a question. But before he could articulate it, the dun flicker of Covenant's ring was effaced by a bright spangling from the walls of the barranca. Suddenly, the whole ravine seemed to be on fire.

Linden sprang erect, expecting to find scores of angry Stonedownors rushing toward her. But as her eyes adjusted, she saw that the source of the reflection was some distance away. The village must have lit an immense bonfire. Flames showed the profile of stone houses between her and the light; fire echoed off the crystal facets in all directions. She could hear nothing to indicate that she and her companions were in danger.

Sunder touched her shoulder. “Come,” he whispered. “Some high purpose gathers the Stonedown. All its people will attend. Perhaps we have been granted an opportunity to find food ”

She hesitated, bent to examine Covenant. A complex fear made her reluctant. “Should we leave him?” His skin felt crisp with fever.

“Where will he go?” the Graveller responded simply.

She bowed her head. Sunder would probably need her. And Covenant seemed far too ill to move, to harm himself. Yet he looked so frail-But she had no choice. Pulling herself upright, she motioned for the Graveller to lead the way.

Without delay, Sunder crept up the ravine. Linden followed as stealthily as she could.

She felt exposed in the brightness of the vale; but no alarm was raised. And the light allowed them to approach the Stonedown easily. Soon they were among the houses.

Sunder stopped at every corner to be sure that the path was clear. But they saw no one. All the dwellings seemed to be empty. The Graveller chose a house. Motioning for Linden to guard the doorway, he eased himself past the curtain.

The sound of voices reached her. For an instant, she froze with a warning in her throat. But then her hearing clarified, located the sound. It came from the centre of the Stonedown. She gripped her relief and waited.

Moments later, Sunder returned. He had a bulging leather knapsack under his arm. In her ear, he breathed that he had found mirkfruit as well as food.

He started to leave. But she stopped him, gestured inward. For a moment, he considered the advantages of knowing what transpired in the village. Then he agreed.

Together, they sneaked forward until only one house stood between them and the centre. The voices became distinct; she could hear anger and uncertainty in them. When Sunder pointed at the roof, she nodded at once. He set his knapsack down, lifted her to the flat eaves. Carefully, she climbed onto the roof.

Sunder handed her the sack. She took it, then reached down to help him join her. The exertion tore a groan from his sore chest; but the sound was too soft to disturb the voices. Side by side, they slid forward until they were able to see and hear what was happening in the centre of the Stonedown.

The people were gathered in a tight ring around the open space. They were a substantially larger number than the population of Mithil Stonedown. In an elusive way, they seemed more prosperous, better-fed, than the folk of Sunder's home. But their faces were grim, anxious, fearful. They watched the centre of the circle with tense attention.

Beside the bonfire stood three figures-two men and a woman. The woman was poised between the men in an attitude of prayer, as if she were pleading with both of them. She wore a sturdy leather shift like the other Stonedownor women. Her pale delicate features were urgent, and the disarray of her raven hair gave her an appearance of fatality.

The man nearest to Linden and Sunder was also a Stonedownor, a tall square individual with a bristling black beard and eyes darkened by conflict. But the person opposite him was unlike anyone Linden had seen before. His raiment was a vivid red robe draped with a black chasuble. A hood shadowed his features. His hands held a short iron rod like a sceptre with an open triangle affixed to its end. Emanations of heiratic pride and vitriol flowed from him as if he were defying the entire Stonedown.

“A Rider!” Sunder whispered. “A Rider of the Clave.”

The woman-she was hardly more than a girl-faced the tall Stonedownor. “Croft!” she begged. Tears suffused her mien. “You are the Graveller. You must forbid!”

“Aye, Hollian,” he replied with great bitterness. While he spoke, his hands toyed with a slim wooden wand. “By right of blood and power, I am the Graveller. And you are an eh-Brand- a benison beyond price to the life of Crystal Stonedown. But he is Sivit na-Mhoram-wist. He claims you in the name of the Clave. How may I refuse?”

“You may refuse-” began the Rider in a sepulchral tone.

“You must refuse!” the woman cried.

“But should you refuse,” Sivit continued remorselessly, “should you think to deny me, I swear by the Sunbane that I will levy the na-Mhoram's Grim upon you, and you will be ground under its might like chaff!”

At the word Grim, a moan ran through the Stonedown; and Sunder shivered.

But Hollian defied their fear. “Croft!” she insisted, “forbid! I care nothing for the na-Mhoram or his Grim. I am an eh-Brand. I foretell the Sunbane! No harm, no Grim or any curse, will find you unwary while I abide here. Croft! My people!” She appealed to the ring of Stonedownors. “Am I nothing, that you cast me aside at the whim of Sivit na-Mhoram-wist?”

“Whim?” barked the Rider. “I speak for the Clave. I do not utter whims. Harken to me, girl. I claim you by right of service. Without the mediation of the Clave-without the wisdom of the Rede and the sacrifice of the na-Mhoram-there would be no life left in any Stonedown or Woodhelven, despite your arrogance. And we must have life for our work. Do you think to deny me? Condemnable folly!”

“She is precious to us,” said the tall Graveller softly. “Do not enforce your will upon us.”

“Is she?” Sivit raged, brandishing his sceptre. “You are sick with her folly. She is not precious. She is an abomination! You think her an eh-Brand, a boon rare in the Land. I say to you, she is a Sun-Sage! Damned as a servant of a-Jeroth! She does not foretell the Sunbane. She causes it to be as she chooses. Against her and her foul kind the Clave strives, seeking to undo the harm such beings wreak.”

The Rider continued to rant; but Linden turned away. To Sunder, she whispered, “Why does he want her?”

“Have you learned nothing?” he replied tightly. “The Clave has power over the Sunbane. For power, they must have blood.”

“Blood?”

He nodded. “At all times, Riders journey the Land, visiting again and again every village. At each visit, they take one or two or three lives-ever young and strong lives-and bear them to Revelstone, where the na-Mhoram works his work.”

Linden clenched her outrage, kept her voice at a whisper. “You mean they're going to kill her?”

“Yes!” he hissed.

At once, all her instincts rebelled. A shock of purpose ran through her, clarifying for the first time her maddening relationship to the Land. Some of Covenant's ready passion became suddenly explicable. “Sunder,” she breathed, “we've got to save her.”

“Save-?” He almost lost control of his voice. “We are two against a Stonedown. And the Rider is mighty.”

“We've got to!” She groped for a way to convince him. The murder of this woman could not be allowed. Why else had Covenant tried to save Joan? Why else had Linden herself risked her life to prevent his death? Urgently, she said, “Covenant tried to save Marid.”

“Yes!” rasped Sunder. “And behold the cost!”

“No.” For a moment, she could not find the answer she needed. Then it came to her. “What's a Sun-Sage?”

He stared at her. “Such a being cannot exist.”

“What,” she enunciated, “is it?”

“The Rider has said,” he murmured. “It is one who can cause the Sunbane.”

She fixed him with all her determination. “Then we need her,”

His eyes seemed to bulge in their sockets. His hands grasped for something to hold onto. But he could not deny the force of her argument. “Mad,” he exhaled through his teeth. “All of us-mad.” Briefly, he searched the Stonedown as if he were looking for valour. Then he reached a decision. “Remain here,” he whispered. "I go to find the Rider's Courser. Perhaps it may be harmed, or driven off. Then he will be unable to bear her away. We will gain time to consider other action."

“Good!” she responded eagerly. “If they leave here, I'll try to see where they take her.”

He gave a curt nod. Muttering softly to himself, “Mad, Mad,” he crept to the rear of the roof and dropped to the ground, taking his knapsack with him.

Linden returned her attention to Hollian's people. The young woman was on her knees, hiding her face in her hands. The Rider stood over her, denouncing her with his sceptre; but he shouted at the Stonedownors.

“Do you believe that you can endure the na-Mhoram's Grim? You are fey and anile. By the Three Corners of Truth! At one word from me, the Clave will unleash such devastation upon you that you will grovel to be permitted to deliver up this foul eh-Brand, and it will avail you nothing!”

Abruptly, the woman jerked upright, threw herself to confront the Graveller. “Croft!” she panted in desperation, “slay this Rider! Let him not carry word to the Clave. Then I will remain in Crystal Stonedown, and the Clave will know nothing of what we have done.” Her hands gripped his jerkin, urging him. “Croft, hear me. Slay him!”

Sivit barked a contemptuous laugh. Then his voice dropped, became low and deadly. “You have not the power.”

“He speaks truly,” Croft murmured to Hollian. Misery knurled his countenance. “He requires no Grim to work our ruin. I must meet his claim, else we will not endure to rue our defiance.”

An inarticulate cry broke from her. For a moment, Linden feared that the young woman would collapse into hysteria. But out of Hollian's distress came an angry dignity. She raised her head, drew herself erect. “You surrender me,” she said bitterly. “I am without help or hope. Yet you must at least accord to me the courtesy of my worth. Restore to me the Iianar”

Croft looked down at the wand in his hands. The rictus of his shoulders revealed his shame and decision. “No,” he said softly. “With this wood you perform your foretelling. Sivit na-Mhoram-wist has no claim upon it-and for you it has no future. Crystal Stonedown will retain it. As a prayer for the birth of a new eh-Brand.”

Triumph shone from the Rider as if he were a torch of malice.

At the far side of the village, Linden glimpsed a sudden hot flaring of red. Sunder's power. He must have made use of his Sunstone. The beam cast vermeil through the crystal, then vanished. She held her breath, fearing that Sunder had given himself away. But the Stonedownors were intent on the conflict in their midst: the instant of force passed unnoticed.

Mute with despair, Hollian turned away from the Graveller, then stopped as if she had been slapped, staring past the corner of the house on which Linden lay. Muffled gasps spattered around the ring; everyone followed the en-Brand's stare.

What-?

Linden peered over the eaves in time to see Covenant come shambling into the centre of the village. He moved like a derelict. His right arm was hideously swollen. Poison blazed in his eyes, His ring spat erratic bursts of white fire.

No! she cried silently. Covenant!

He was so weak that any of the Stonedownors could have toppled him with one hand. But the rage of his fever commanded their restraint; the circle parted for him involuntarily, admitting him to the open space.

He lurched to a stop, stood glaring flames around him. “Linden,” he croaked in a parched voice. “Linden.”

Covenant!

Without hesitation, she dropped from the roof. Before they could realize what was happening, she thrust her way between the Stonedownors, hastened to Covenant.

“Linden?” He recognized her with difficulty; confusion and venom wrestled across his visage. “You left me.”

“The Halfhand!” Sivit yelled. “The white ring!”

The air was bright with peril; it sprang from the bonfire, leaped off the walls of the barranca. Scores of people trembled on the verge of violence. But Linden held everything else in abeyance, concentrated on Covenant. “No. We didn't leave you. We came to find food. And to save her.” She pointed at Hollian.

The stare of his delirium did not shift. “You left me.”

“I say it is the Halfhand!” shouted the Rider. “He has come as the Clave foretold! Take him! Slay him!”

The Stonedownors flinched under Sivit's demand; but they made no move. Covenant's intensity held them back.

“No!” Linden averred to him urgently. “Listen to me! That man is a Rider of the Clave. The Clave. He's going to kill her so that he can use her blood. We've got to save her!”

His gaze twisted toward Hollian, then returned to Linden. He blinked at her uncomprehendingly. “You left me.” The pain of finding himself alone had closed his mind to every other appeal.

“Fools!” Sivit raged. Suddenly, he flourished his sceptre. Blood covered his lean hands. Gouts of red fire spewed from the iron triangle. Swift as vengeance, he moved forward.

“She's going to be sacrificed!” Linden cried at Covenant's confusion. “Like Joan! Like Joan!”

“Joan?” In an instant, all his uncertainty became anger and poison. He swung to face the Rider. “Joan!”

Before Sivit could strike, white flame exploded around Covenant, enveloping him in conflagration. He burned with silver fury, coruscated the air. Linden recoiled, flung up her hands to ward her face. Wild magic began to erupt in all directions.

A rampage of force tore Sivit's sceptre from his hands. The iron fired black, red, white, then melted into slag on the ground. Argent lashed the bonfire; flaming brands scattered across the circle. Wild lightning sizzled into the heavens until the sky screamed and the crystal walls rang out celestial peals of power.

The very fabric of the dirt stretched under Linden's feet, as if it were about to tear. She staggered to her knees.

The Stonedownors fled. Shrieks of fear escaped among the houses. A moment later, only Croft, Hollian, and Sivit remained. Croft and Hollian were too stunned to move. Sivit huddled on the ground like a craven, with his arms over his head.

Abruptly, as if Covenant had closed a door in his mind, the wild magic subsided. He emerged from the flame; his ring flickered and went out. His legs started to fold.

Linden surged to her feet, caught him before he fell. Wrapping her arms around him, she held him upright.

Then Sunder appeared, carrying the knapsack. He ran forward, shouting, “Flee! Swiftly, lest they regain their wits and pursue us!” Blood still marked a new cut on his left forearm. As he passed her, he snatched at Hollian's arm. She resisted; she was too numb with shock to understand what was happening. He spun on her, fumed into her face, “Do you covet death?”

His urgency pierced her stupor. She regained her alertness with a moan. "No. I will come. But-but I must have my Iianar.' pointed at the wand in Croft's hands.

Sunder marched over to the tall Stonedownor. Croft's grasp tightened reflexively on the wood.

Wincing with pain, Sunder struck Croft a sharp blow in the stomach. As the taller man doubled over, Sunder neatly plucked the Iianar from him.

“Come!” Sunder shouted at Linden and Hollian. “Now!”

A strange grim relief came over Linden. Her first assessments of Covenant had been vindicated; at last, he had shown himself capable of significant power. Bracing his left arm over her shoulders, she helped him out of the centre of the Stonedown.

Sunder took Hollian's wrist. He led the way among the houses as fast as Covenant could move.

The vale was dark now; only the crescent moon, and the reflection of dying embers along the walls, lit the ravine. The breeze carried a sickly odour of rot from across the Mithil, and the water looked black and viscid, like a Satanist's chrism. But no one hesitated. Hollian seemed to accept her rescue with mute incomprehension. She helped Linden ease Covenant into the water, secure him across the raft. Sunder urged them out into the River, and they went downstream clinging to the wood.

Eleven: The Corruption of Beauty

THERE was no pursuit. Covenant's power had stunned the people of Crystal Stonedown; the Rider had lost both sceptre and Courser; and the River was swift. Soon Linden stopped looking behind her, stopped listening for the sounds of chase. She gave her concern to Covenant.

He had no strength left, made no effort to grip the raft, did not even try to hold up his head. She could not hear his respiration over the lapping of the water, and his pulse seemed to have withdrawn to a place beyond her reach. His face looked ghastly in the pale moonlight. All her senses groaned to her that he suffered from a venom of the soul.

His condition galled her. She clung to him, searching among her ignorances and incapacities for some way to succour him. A voice in her insisted that if she could feel his distress so acutely she ought to be able to affect it somehow, that surely the current of perception which linked her to him could run both ways. But she shied away from the implications. She had no power, had nothing with which to oppose his illness except the private blood of her own life. Her fear of so much vulnerability foiled her, left her cursing because she lacked even the limited resources of her medical bag-lacked anything which could have spared her this intimate responsibility for his survival.

For a time, her companions rode the River in silence. But at last Hollian spoke. Linden was dimly cognizant of the young woman's plight. The en-Brand had been surrendered to death by her own village, and had been impossibly rescued-Eventually, all the things she did not understand overcame her reluctance. She breathed clenched apprehension into the darkness. “Speak to me. I do not know you.”

“Your pardon.” Sunder's tone expressed weariness and useless regret. “We have neglected courtesy. I am Sunder son of Nassic, at one time — ” he became momentarily bitter — “Graveller of Mithil Stonedown, fourscore leagues to the south. With me are Linden Avery the Chosen and ur-Lord Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and white gold wielder. They are strangers to the Land.”

Strangers, Linden murmured. She saw herself as an unnatural visitant. The thought had sharp edges on all sides.

The eh-Brand answered like a girl remembering her manners with difficulty. “I am Hollian Amith-daughter, eh-Brand of Crystal Stonedown. I am-” She faltered, then said in a sore voice, “I know not whether to give you thanks for redeeming my life-or curses for damning my home. The na-Mhoram's Grim will blacken Crystal Stonedown forever.”

Sunder spoke roughly. “Perhaps not.”

“How not?” she demanded in her grief. “Surely Sivit na-Mhoram-wist will not forbear. He will ride forthwith to Revelstone, and the Grim will be spoken. Nothing can prevent it.”

“He will not ride to Revelstone. I have slain his Courser.” Half to himself, Sunder muttered, “The Rede did not reveal to me that a Sunstone may wield such might.”

Hollian gave a low cry of relief. “And the rukh with which he moulds the Sunbane is destroyed. Thus he cannot call down ill upon my people.” A recovery of hope silenced her. She relaxed in the water as if it were a balm for her fears.

Covenant's need was loud in Linden's ears. She tried to deafen herself to it. “The Rider's sceptre — his rukh? Where did he get the blood to use it? I didn't see nun cut himself.”

“The Riders of the Clave,” Sunder responded dourly, “are not required to shed themselves. They are fortified by the young men and women of the Land. Each rukh is hollow, and contains the blood with which the Sunbane is wielded.”

Echoes of the outrage which had determined her to rescue Hollian awoke in Linden. She welcomed them, explored them, hunting for courage. The rites of the Sunbane were barbaric enough as Sunder practiced them. To be able to achieve such power without personal cost seemed to her execrable. She did not know how to reconcile her ire with what she had heard of the Clave's purpose, its reputation for resistance to the Sunbane. But she was deeply suspicious of that reputation. She had begun to share Covenant's desire to reach Revelstone.

But Covenant was dying.

Everything returned to Covenant and death.

After a while, Hollian spoke again. A different fear prompted her to ask, “Is it wild magic? Wild magic in sooth?”

“Yes,” the Graveller said.

“Then why-?” Linden could feel Hollian's disconcertion. “How did it transpire that Mithil Stonedown did not slay him, as the Rede commands?”

“I did not permit it,” replied Sunder flatly. “In his name, I turned from my people, so that he would not be shed,”

“You are a Graveller,” Hollian whispered in her surprise. “A Stonedownor like myself. Such a deed-surely it was difficult for you. How were you brought to commit such transgression?”

“Daughter of Amith,” Sunder answered like a formal confession, "I was brought to it by the truth of the Rede. The words of the ur-Lord were words of beauty rather than evil. He spoke as one who owns both will and power to give his words substance. And in my heart the truth of the Rede was unbearable.

“Also,” he went on grimly, “I have been made to learn that the Rede itself contains falsehood.”

“Falsehood?” protested Hollian. “No. The Rede is the life of the Land. Were it false, all who rely upon it would die.”

Sunder considered for a moment, then said, “Eh-Brand, do you know the aliantha?”

She nodded. “It is most deadly poison.”

“No.” His certitude touched Linden. In spite of all that had happened, he possessed an inner resilience she could not match. “It is good beyond any other fruit. I speak from knowledge. For three suns, we have eaten aliantha at every chance.”

“Surely”- Hollian groped for arguments — “it is the cause of the ur-Lord's sickness?”

“No. This sickness has come upon him previously, and the aliantha gave him healing.”

At this, she paused, trying to absorb what she had heard. Her head turned from side to side, searching the night for guidance. When she spoke again, her voice came faintly over the wet sounds of the River. "You have redeemed my life. I will not doubt you. I am homeless and without purpose, for I cannot return to Crystal Stonedown, and the world is perilous, and I do not comprehend my fate. I must not doubt you.

“Yet I would ask you of your goal. All is dark to me. You have incurred the wrath of the Clave for me. You journey great distances under the Sunbane. Will you give me reason?”

Sunder said deliberately, “Linden Avery?” passing the question to her. She understood; he was discomfited by the answer, and Hollian was not likely to take it calmly. Linden wanted to reject the difficulty, force Sunder and Hollian to fend for themselves. But, because her own weakness was intolerable to her, she responded squarely, “We're going to Revelstone.”

Hollian reacted in horror. “Revelstone? You betray me!” At once, she thrust away from the raft, flailing for an escape.

Sunder lunged after her. He tried to shout something, but his damaged chest changed it to a gasp of pain.

Linden ignored him. His lunge had rolled the raft, dropping Covenant into the water.

She grappled for Covenant, brought him back to the surface. His respiration was so shallow that he did not even cough at the water which streamed from his mouth. In spite of his weight, he conveyed a conviction of utter frailty.

Sunder fought to prevent Hollian's flight; but he was hampered by his hurt ribs. “Are you mad?” he panted at her. “If we sought your harm, Sivit's intent would have sufficed!”

Struggling to support Covenant, Linden snapped, “Let her go!”

“Let-?” the Graveller protested.

“Yes!” Ferocity burned through her. “I need help. By God, if she wants to leave, that's her right!”

“Heaven and Earth!” retorted Sunder. “Then why have we imperilled our lives for her?”

“Because she was going to be killed! I don't care if we need her or not. We don't have the right to hold her against her will. I need help.”

Sunder spat a curse. Abruptly, he abandoned Hollian, came limping through the water to take some of Covenant's weight. But he was livid with pain and indignation. Over his shoulder, he rasped at Hollian, “Your suspicion is unjust!”

“Perhaps.” The eh-Brand trod water twenty feet away; her head was a piece of darkness among the shadows of the River. “Assuredly, I have been unjust to Linden Avery.” After a moment, she demanded, “What purpose drives you to Revelstone?”

“That's where the answers are.” As quickly as it had come, Linden's anger vanished, and a bone-deep dread took its place. She had been through too much. Without Sunder's aid, she could not have borne Covenant back to the raft. “Covenant thinks he can fight the Sunbane. But he has to understand it first. That's why he wants to talk to the Clave.”

“Fight?” asked Hollian in disbelief. “Do you speak of altering the Sunbane?”

“Why not?” Linden clung to the raft. Dismay clogged her limbs. “Isn't that what you do?”

“I?”

“Aren't you a Sun-Sage?”

“No!” Hollian declared sharply. “That is a lie, uttered by Sivit na-Mhoram-wist to strengthen his claim upon me. I am an eh-Brand. I see the sun. I do not shape it.”

To Linden, Sunder growled, “Then we have no need of her.”

Dimly, Linden wondered why he felt threatened by Hollian. But she lacked the courage to ask him. “We need all the help we can get,” she murmured. “I want her with us. If she's willing.”

“Why?”

At the same time, Hollian asked, “Of what use am I to you?”

Without warning, Linden's throat filled with weeping. She felt like a lorn child, confronted by extremities she could not meet. She had to muster all her severity in order to articulate, “He's dying. I can feel it.” In a shudder of memory, she saw Marid's fangs. “It's worse than it was before. I need help.” The help she needed was vivid and appalling to her; but she could not stop. “One of you isn't enough. You'll just bleed to death. Or I will.” Impelled by her fear of losing Covenant, she wrenched her voice at Hollian. “I need power. To heal him.”

She had not seen the eh-Brand approach; but now Hollian was swimming at her side. Softly, the young woman said, “Perhaps such shedding is unnecessary. It may be that I can succour him. An eh-Brand has some knowledge of healing. But I do not wish to fall prey to the Clave a second time.”

Linden gritted her teeth until her jaw ached, containing her desperation. “You've seen what he can do. Do you think he's going to walk into Revelstone and just let them sacrifice him?”

Hollian thought for a moment, touched Covenant's swelling gently. Then she said, “I will attempt it. But I must await the sun's rising. And I must know how this harm came upon him.”

Linden's self-command did not reach so far. Sunrise would be too late. Covenant could not last until dawn. The Chosen! she rasped at herself. Dear God. She left the eh-Brand's questions for Sunder to answer. As he began a taut account of what had happened to Covenant, Linden's attention slipped away to the Unbeliever's wracked and failing body.

She could feel the poison seeping past the useless constriction of his shirt sleeve. Death gnawed like leprosy at the sinews of his life. He absolutely could not last until dawn.

Her mother had begged to die; but he wanted to live. He had exchanged himself for Joan, had smiled as if the prospect were a benison; yet his every act showed that he wanted to live. Perhaps he was mad; perhaps his talk about a Despiser was paranoia rather than truth. But the conclusions he drew from it were ones she could not refute. She had learned in Crystal Stonedown that she shared them.

Now he was dying.

She had to help him. She was a doctor. Surely she could do something about his illness. Impossible that her strange acuity could not cut both ways. With an inward whimper, she abandoned resistance, bared her heart.

Slowly, she reached her awareness into him, inhabited his flesh with her private self. She felt his eviscerated respiration as her own, suffered the heat of his fever, clung to him more intimately than she had ever held to any man.

Then she was foundering in venom. She was powerless to repel it. Nausea filled her like the sick breath of the old man who had told her to Be true. No part of her knew how to give life in this way. But what she could do, she did. She fought for him with the same grim and secretly hopeless determination which had compelled her to study medicine as if it were an act of rage against the ineffectuality of her parents-a man and woman who had understood nothing about life except death, and had coveted the thing they understood with the lust of lovers. They had taught her the importance of efficacy. She had pursued it without rest for fifteen years.

That pursuit had taken her to Haven Farm. And there her failure in the face of Joan's affliction had cast her whole life into doubt. Now that doubt wore the taste and corruption of Covenant's venom. She could not quench the poison. But she tried by force of will to shore up the last preterite barriers of his life. This sickness was a moral evil; it offended her just as Marid had offended her, as Nassic's murder and the hot knife had offended her; and she denied it with every beat of her heart. She squeezed l air into his lungs, pressured his pulse to continue, opposed the gnawing and spread of the ill.

Alone, she kept him alive through the remainder of the night.

The bones of her forehead ached with shared fever when Sunder brought her back to herself. Dawn was in the air. He and Hollian had drawn the raft toward the riverbank. Linden looked about her tabidly. Her soul was full of ashes. A part of her panted over and over, No. Never again. The River ran through a lowland which should have been composed of broad leas; but instead, the area was a grey waste where mountains of preternatural grass had been beaten down by three days of torrential rain, then rotted by the sun of pestilence. As the approach of day stirred the air, currents of putrefaction shifted back and forth across the Mithil.

But she saw why Sunder and Hollian had chosen this place. Near the bank, a sandbar angled partway across the watercourse, forming a swath where Covenant could lie, away from the fetid grass.

The Stonedownors secured the raft, lilted Covenant to the sand, then raised him into Linden's arms. Hugging him erect, though she herself swayed with exhaustion, she watched as Sunder and Hollian hastened to the riverbank and began hunting for stone. Soon they were out of sight.

With the thin remnant of her strength, Linden confronted the sun.

It hove over the horizon wearing incarnadine like the sails of a plague-ship. She welcomed its warmth-needed to be warm, yearned to be dry-but its corona made her moan with empty repugnance. She lowered Covenant to the sand, then sat beside him, studied him as if she were afraid to close her eyes. She did not know how soon the insects would begin to swarm.

But when Sunder and Hollian returned, they were excited. The tension between them had not relaxed; but they had found something important to them both. Together, they carried a large bush which they had uprooted as if it were a treasure.

“Voure!” Hollian called as she and Sunder brought the bush to the sandbar. Her pale skin was luminous in the sunlight. “This is good fortune. Voure is greatly rare.” They set the bush down nearby, and at once began to strip its leaves.

“Rare, indeed,” muttered Sunder. “Such names are spoken in the Rede, but I have never beheld voure.”

“Does it heal?” Linden asked faintly.

In response, the eh-Brand gave her a handful of leaves. They were as pulpy as sponges; clear sap dripped from their broken stems. Their pungent odour made her wince.

“Rub the sap upon your face and arms,” said Hollian. “Voure is a potent ward against insects.”

Linden stared until her senses finally registered the truth of the eh-Brand's words. Then she obeyed. When she had smeared sap over herself, she did the same to Covenant.

Sunder and Hollian were similarly busy. After they had finished, he stored the remaining leaves in his knapsack.

“Now,” the eh-Brand said promptly, “I must do what lies within my capacity to restore the Halfhand.”

“His name is Covenant,” Linden protested dimly. To her, Halfhand was a Clave word: she did not like it.

Hollian blinked as if this were irrelevant, made no reply.

“Do you require my aid?” asked Sunder. His stiffness had returned. In some way that Linden could not fathom, Hollian annoyed or threatened him.

The eh-Brand's response was equally curt. “I think not.”

“Then I will put this voure to the test.” He stood up. “I will go in search of aliantha.” Moving brusquely, he went back to the riverbank, stalked away through the rotting grass.

Hollian wasted no time. From within her shift, she drew out a small iron dirk and her Iianar wand. Kneeling at Covenant's right shoulder, she placed the Iianar on his chest, took the dirk in her left hand.

The sun was above the horizon now, exerting its corruption. But the pungence of the voure seemed to form a buckler against putrefaction. And though large insects had begun to buzz and gust in all directions, they did not come near the sandbar. Linden ached to concentrate on such things. She did not want to watch the eh-Brand's bloody rites. Did not want to see them fail. Yet she attached her eyes to the knife, forced herself to follow it.

Like Sunder's left forearm, Hollian's right palm was laced with old scars. She drew the iron across her flesh. A runnel of dark rich blood started down her bare wrist.

Setting down her dirk, she took up the Iianar in her bleeding hand. Her lips moved, but she made no sound.

The atmosphere focused around her wand. Abruptly, flames licked the wood. Fire the colour of the sun's aura skirled around her ringers. Her voice became an audible chant, but the words were alien to Linden. The fire grew stronger; it covered Hollian's hand, began to tongue the blood on her wrist.

As she chanted, her fire sent out long delicate shoots like tendrils of wisteria. They grew to the sand, stretched along the water like veins of blood in the current, went searching up the riverbank as if they sought a place to root.

Supported by a shimmering network of power tendrils, she tightened her chant, and lowered the Iianar to Covenant's envenomed forearm. Linden flinched instinctively. She could taste the ill in the fire, feel the preternatural force of the Sunbane. Hollian drew on the same sources of power which Sunder tapped with his Sunstone. But after a moment Linden discerned that the fire's effect was not ill. Hollian fought poison with poison. When she lifted her wand from Covenant's arm, the tension of his swelling had already begun to recede.

Carefully, she shifted her power to his forehead, set flame to the fever in his skull.

At once, his body sprang rigid, head jerked back; a scream ripped his throat. From his ring, an instant white detonation blasted sand over the two women and the River.

Before Linden could react, he went completely limp.

The eh-Brand sagged at his side. The flame vanished from her Iianar, leaving the wood pale, clean, and whole. In the space of a heartbeat, the fire-tendrils extinguished themselves; but they continued to echo across Linden's sight.

She rushed to examine Covenant. Apprehension choked her. But as she touched him, he inhaled deeply, began to breathe as if he were only asleep. She felt for his pulse; it was distinct and secure.

Relief flooded through her. The Mithil and the sun grew oddly dim. She was prone on the sand without realizing that she had reclined. Her left hand lay in the water. That cool touch seemed to be all that kept her from weeping.

In a weak voice, Hollian asked, “Is he well?”

Linden did not answer because she had no words.

Shortly, Sunder returned, his hands laden with treasure-berries. He seemed to understand the exhaustion of his companions. Without speaking, he bent over Linden, slipped a berry between her lips.

Its deliciousness restored her. She sat up, estimated the amount of aliantha Sunder held, took her share. The berries fed a part of her which had been stretched past its limits by her efforts to keep Covenant alive.

Hollian watched in weariness and dismay as Sunder consumed his portion of the aliantha. But she could not bring herself to touch the berries he offered her.

As her strength returned, Linden propped Covenant into a half-sitting position, then pitted berries and fed them to him. Their effect was almost immediate; they steadied his respiration, firmed his muscle tone, cleansed the colour of his skin.

Deliberately, she looked at Hollian. The exertion of aiding Covenant had left the eh-Brand in need of aliment. And her searching gaze could find no other answer. With a shudder of resolution, she accepted a berry, put it in her mouth. After a moment, she bit down on it.

Her own pleasure startled her. Revelation glowed in her eyes, and her fear seemed to fall away like a discarded mantle.

With a private sigh, Linden lowered Covenant's head to the sand, and let herself rest.

The companions remained on the sandbar for a good part of the morning, recuperating. Then, when Covenant's swelling had turned from black to a mottled yellow-purple, and had declined from his shoulder, Linden judged that he was able to travel. They set off down the Mithil once more.

The voure continued to protect them from insects. Hollian said the sap would retain its potency for several days; and Linden began to believe this when she discovered that the odour still clung to her after more than half a day immersed in the water.

In the lurid red of sunset, they stopped on a broad slope of rock spreading northward out of the River. After the strain of the past days, Linden hardly noticed the discomfort of sleeping on stone. Yet part of her stayed in touch with Covenant, like a string tuned to resonate sympathetically at a certain pitch. In the middle of the night, she found herself staring at the acute sickle of the moon. Covenant was sitting beside her. He seemed unaware of her. Quietly, he moved to the water's edge for a drink.

She followed, anxious that he might be suffering from a relapse of delirium. But when he saw her, he recognized her with a nod, and drew her away to a place where they could at least whisper without disturbing their companions. The way he carried his arm showed that it was tender but utile. His expression was obscure in the vague light; but his voice sounded lucid.

“Who's the woman?”

She stood close to him, peered into the shadow of his countenance. “You don't remember?”

“I remember bees.” He gave a quick shudder. “That Raver. Nothing else.”

Her efforts to preserve his life had left her vulnerable to him. She had shared his extremity; and now he seemed to have a claim on her which she would never be able to refuse. Even her heartbeat belonged to him, “You had a relapse,”

“A relapse-?” He tried to flex his sore arm.

“You were stung, and went into shock. It was like another snakebite in the same place, only worse. I thought-” She touched his shoulder involuntarily. “I thought you weren't going to make it.”

“When was that?”

“A day and a half ago.”

“How did-?” he began, then changed his mind. “Then what?”

“Sunder and I couldn't do anything for you. We just went on.” She started to speak rapidly. “That night, we came to another Stonedown.” She told him the story as if she were in a hurry to reach the end of it. But when she tried to describe the power of his ring, he stopped her. “That's impossible,” he whispered.

“You don't remember at all?”

“No. But I tell you it's impossible. I've always-always had to have some kind of trigger. The proximity of some other power. Like the orcrest. It never happens by itself. Never.”

“Maybe it was the Rider.”

“Yes.” He grasped the suggestion gratefully. “That must be it. That sceptre-his rukh” He repeated the name she had told him as if he needed reassurance.

She nodded, then resumed her narration.

When she was done, he spoke his thoughts hesitantly. “You say I was delirious. I must have been-I don't remember any of it. Then this Rider tried to attack. All of a sudden, I had power.” His tone conveyed the importance of the question. “What set me off? I shouldn't have been able to defend myself, if I was that sick. Did you get hurt? Did Sunder-?”

“No.” Suddenly, the darkness between them was full of significance. She had risked herself extravagantly to keep him alive-and for what? In his power and delirium he had believed nothing about her except that she had abandoned him. And even now he did not know what he had cost her. No. She could hardly muffle her bitterness as she replied, “We're all right. It wasn't that.”

Softly, he asked, “Then what was it?”

“I made you think Joan was in danger.” He flinched; but she went on, struck at him with words. “It was the only thing I could find. You weren't going to save yourself-weren't going to save me. You kept accusing me of deserting you. By God,” she grated, “I've stood by you since the first time I saw Joan. No matter how crazy you are, I've stood by you. You'd be dead now if it weren't for me. But you kept accusing me, and I couldn't reach you. The only name that meant anything to you was Joan.”

She hurt him. His right hand made a gesture toward her, winced away. In the darkness, he seemed to have no eyes; his sockets gaped at her as if he had been blinded. She expected him to protest that he had often tried to help her, often striven to give her what support he could. But he stood there as he had stood when she had first confronted him on Haven Farm, upright under the weight of impossible burdens. When he spoke, his voice was edged with rage and exquisite grief.

"She was my wife. She divorced me because I had leprosy. Of all the things that happened to me, that was the worst. God knows I've committed crimes. I've raped-killed- betrayed-But those were things I did, and I did everything I could to make restitution. She treated me as if I were a crime. Just being who I was, just suffering from a physical affliction I couldn't have prevented or cured anymore than I could have prevented or cured ray own mortality, I terrified her. That was the worst. Because I believed it. I felt that way about leprosy myself.

“It gave her a claim on me, I spent eleven years living with it — I couldn't bear being the cause. I sold my soul to pay that debt, and it doesn't make any difference.” The muscles of his face contorted at the memory. “I'm a leper. I'm never going to stop being a leper. I'm never going to be able to quit her claim on me. It goes deeper than any choice.” His words were the colour of blood.

“But, Linden,” he went on; and his direct appeal stung her heart. “She's my ex-wife.” In spite of his efforts to control it, his voice carried fatality like a lament. “If the past is any indication, I'm never going to see her again.”

She clung to him with her eyes. Uncertainties thronged in her. Why would he not see Joan again? How had he sold himself? How much had he withheld? But in her vulnerability one question mattered more than all the others. As steadily, noncommittally, as she could, she asked, “Do you want to see her again?”

To her tense ears, the simplicity of his reply bore the weight of a declaration. “No. I don't particularly like being a leper.”

She turned away so that he would not see the tears in her eyes. She did not want to be so exposed to him. She was in danger of losing herself. And yet her relief was as poignant as love. Over her shoulder, she said flatly, “Get some rest. You need it.” Then she went back to where Sunder and Hollian lay, stretched out on the rock, and spent a long time shivering as if she were caught in a winter of unshielded loneliness.

The sun had already risen, red and glowering, when she awoke. A pile of aliantha near Sunder's knapsack showed that the Stonedownors had foraged successfully for food. Covenant and the eh-Brand stood together, making each other's acquaintance. Sunder sat nearby as if he were grinding his teeth.

Linden climbed to her feet. Her body felt abused by the hardness of her bed, but she ignored it. Averting her eyes from Covenant as if in shame, she went to the river to wash her face.

When she returned, Sunder divided the treasure-berries. The travellers ate in silence: aliantha was a food which imposed stillness. Yet Linden could not deafen herself to the ambience of her companions. Covenant was as rigid as he had ever been on Haven Farm. Hollian's delicate features wore perplexity as if it were a kind of fear. And the darkness of the Graveller's mood had not lifted-resentment directed at the eh-Brand, or at himself.

They made Linden feel lost. She was responsible for their various discomforts-and inadequate to do anything about it. In sustaining Covenant, she had opened doors which she now could not close, though she swore she would close them. Muttering sourly to herself, she finished her aliantha, scattered the seeds beyond the rock, then went severely through the motions of preparing to enter the River.

But Hollian could not bear her own trouble in silence. After a moment, she addressed the Unbeliever. “You say that I am to name you Covenant-though it is a name of ill omen, and sits unquietly in my mouth. Very well. Covenant. Have you considered where you go? The Graveller and Linden Avery say that you are destined for Revelstone. My heart shrinks from the thought-but if such is your goal, I will not gainsay it. Yet Revelstone lies there.” She pointed northwestward. “Eleven score leagues distant. The Mithil no longer shares your way.”

“That is known to us, eh-Brand,” Sunder muttered.

She ignored him. “It may be that we can journey afoot, with the aid of voure.” She hesitated, recognizing the difficulty of what she proposed. “And great good fortune.” Her eyes did not leave Covenant's face.

“Maybe.” His tone betrayed that he had already made his decision. “But I don't want to take the chance of getting stung again. We'll stay on the River for another day or two, anyway.”

“Covenant.” Hollian's gaze was poignant. “Do you know what lies that way?”

“Yes.” He met her squarely. “Andelain.”

Andelain? The concealed intensity with which he said that name brought Linden to alertness.

“Do you-” Hollian wrestled against her apprehension. “Do you choose to approach Andelain?”

“Yes.” Covenant's resolution was complete. But he studied the eh-Brand closely, as if her concern disturbed him. “I want to see it. Before I go to Revelstone.”

His assertion appalled her. She recoiled. Gasping, she strove to shout, but could not find enough air in all the wide morning. “You are mad. Or a servant of a-Jeroth, as the Rede proclaims.” She turned toward Linden, then Sunder, beseeching them to hear her. “You must not permit it.” She snatched a raw breath, cried out, “You must not!”

Covenant sprang at her, dug his fingers into her shoulders, shook her. “What's wrong with Andelain?”

Hollian's mouth worked; but she could find no words.

“Sunder!” Covenant barked.

Stiffly, the Graveller replied, “I am fourscore leagues from my home. I know nothing of this Andelain.”

Hollian fought to master herself. “Covenant,” she said in a livid tone, “you may eat aliantha. You may defy the Clave. You may trample upon the Rede, and cast your challenge to the Sunbane itself. But you must not enter Andelain.”

Covenant lowered his voice, demanded dangerously, “Why not?”

“It is a snare and a delusion!” she moaned. "An abomination in the Land. It lies lovely and cruel before the eyes, and seduces all who look upon it to their destruction. It is impervious to the Sunbane!"

“Impossible!” snapped Sunder.

“No!” Hollian panted. “I speak truly. Sun after sun, it remains unaltered, imitating paradise.” She thrust all her dismay at Covenant. "Many people have been betrayed-The tale of them is often told in all this region. But I speak not only of tales. I have known four-four brave Stonedownors who succumbed to that lure. Distraught by their lives, they left Crystal Stonedown to test the tale of Andelain. Two entered, and did not return. Two made their way to Crystal Stonedown once more-and the madness in them raved like the na-Mhoram's Grim. No succour could anile their violence. Croft was driven to sacrifice them.

“Covenant,” she begged, “do not journey there. You will meet a doom more terrible than any unshielded Sunbane.” Her every word vibrated with conviction, with honest fear. “Andelain is a desecration of the soul.”

Roughly, Covenant thrust the eh-Brand away from him. He whirled, strode down the slope to stand at the water's edge. His fists clenched and unclenched, trembling, at his sides.

Linden went to him at once, seeking a way to dissuade him. She believed Hollian. But when she touched his arm, the savagery in him struck her mute. “Andelain.” His voice was taut with fatality and rage. Without warning, he turned on her. His eyes blazed through her. “You say you've stood by me.” His whisper expressed more bloodshed than any shout. “Do it now. Nothing else matters. Stand by me.”

Before she could try to respond, he spun toward Sunder and Hollian. They stared at him, dumbfounded by his passion. The sun limned his profile like a cynosure. “Andelain used to be the heart of the Land.” He sounded as if he were strangling. “I have to find out what happened to it.” The next moment, he was in the water, swimming downriver with all his strength.

Linden checked herself, did not follow him. He could not keep up that pace; she would be able to rejoin him. Stand by me. Her senses told her that Hollian spoke the truth. There was something heinous concealed in Andelain. But Covenant's appeal outweighed any conviction of peril. She had striven with the intimacy of a lover to save his life. The cost of that intimacy she could not endure; but she could do other things for him. She faced the Stonedownors. “Sunder?”

The Graveller glanced away along the River, then over at Hollian, before he met Linden's demand. “The eh-Brand is a Stonedownor,” he replied, “like myself. I trust her fear. But my lot now lies with the ur-Lord. I will accompany him.”

With a simple nod, Linden accepted his decision. “Hollian?”

The eh-Brand seemed unable to confront the choice she had to make. Her eyes wandered the stone, searching it for answers it did not contain. “Does it come to this?” she murmured bitterly, “that I have been rescued from peril into peril?” But slowly she summoned up the strength which had enabled her to face Croft and Sivit with dignity. “It is stated in the Rede beyond any doubt that the Halfhand is a servant of a-Jeroth.”

Flatly, Linden said, “The Rede is wrong.”

“That cannot be!” Hollian's fear was palpable in the air. “If the Rede is false, how can it sustain life?”

Unexpectedly, Sunder interposed himself. “Eh-Brand.” His voice knotted as if he had arrived without warning or preparation at a crisis. “Linden Avery speaks of another wrong altogether. To her, all things are wrong which arise from the Sunbane.”

Hollian stared at him. And Linden, too, watched him narrowly. She chaffed to be on her way; but the Graveller's efforts to resolve his own feelings kept her still.

“Eh-Brand,” he went on, gritting his teeth, "I have held you in resentment. Your presence is a reproach to me. You are a Stonedownor. You comprehend what has come to pass when a Graveller betrays his home. Whether you choose or no, you accuse me. And your plight is enviable to me. You are innocent of where you stand. Whatever path you follow from this place, none can lay blame upon you. All my paths are paths of blame.

"My vindication has been that I am necessary to the ur-Lord, and to Linden Avery, and to their purpose. His vision touched my heart, and the survival of that vision has been in my hands. Lacking my aid, they would be long dead, and with them the one clear word of beauty I have been given to hear.

“Whether you choose or no, you deprive me of my necessity. Your knowledge of the Sunbane and of the perils before us surely excels mine. You give healing where I cannot. You have not shed life. In your presence, I have no answer to my guilt.”

“Sunder,” Hollian breathed. “Graveller. This castigation avails nothing. The past is beyond change. Your vindication cannot be taken from you.”

“All things change,” he replied tightly. “Ur-Lord Covenant alters the past at every turning. Therefore”- he cut off her protest. “I am without choice, I cannot bear that this alteration should be undone. But there is choice for you. And because you own choice, eh-Brand, I implore you. Give your service to the ur-Lord. He offers much-and is in such need. Your aid is greater than mine.”

Hollian's gaze scoured him as he spoke. But she did not find any answer to her fear. “Ah,” she sighed bitterly, “I do not see this choice. Death lies behind me and horror before. This is not choice. It is torment.”

“It is choice!” Sunder shouted, unable to restrain his vehemence. “Neither death nor horror is compulsory for you. You may depart from us. Find a new people to be your home. They will distrust you for a time-but that will pass. No Stonedown would willingly sacrifice an eh-Brand.”

His words took both Hollian and Linden by surprise. Hollian had plainly given no thought to the idea he raised. And Linden could not guess why he used such an argument. “Sunder,” she said carefully, “what do you think you're doing?”

“I seek to persuade her.” He did not take his eyes from Hollian. “A choice made freely is stronger than one compelled. We must have her strength-else I fear we will not gain Revelstone.”

Linden strove to understand him. “Do you mean to tell me that now you want to go to Revelstone?”

“I must,” he responded; but his words were directed toward the eh-Brand. “No other purpose remains to me. I must see the lies of the Rede answered. Throughout all the generations of the Sunbane, the Riders have taken blood in the name of the Rede. Now they must be required to speak the truth.”

Linden nodded, bent her attention on Hollian as the eh-Brand absorbed his argument, hunted for a reply. After a moment, she said slowly, holding his gaze, “In the aliantha- if in no other way-I have been given cause to misdoubt the Rede. And Sivit na-Mhoram-wist sought my death, though it was plain for all to see that I was of great benefit to Crystal Stonedown. If you follow ur-Lord Covenant in the name of truth, I will accompany you.” At once, she turned to Linden. “But I will not enter Andelain. That I will not do.”

Linden acknowledged this proviso. “All right. Let's go.” She had been too long away from Covenant; her anxiety for him tightened all her muscles. But one last requirement held her back. “Sunder,” she said deliberately. “Thanks.”

Her gratitude seemed to startle him. But then he replied with a mute bow. In that gesture, they understood each other.

Leaving the knapsack and the raft to the Stonedownors, Linden dove into the water and went after Covenant.

She found him resting on a sand-spit beyond a bend in the River. He looked weary and abandoned, as if he had not expected her to come. But when she pulled herself out of the water near him, shook her eyes clear, she could see the relief which lay half-hidden behind his convalescence and his unkempt beard.

“Are you alone?”

“No. They're coming. Sunder talked her into it.”

He did not respond. Lowering his head to his knees, he hid his face as if he did not want to admit how intensely he felt that he had been reprieved.

Shortly, Sunder and Hollian swam into view; and soon the companions were on their way downriver again. Covenant rode the current in silence, with his gaze always fixed ahead. And Linden, too, remained still, trying to gather up the scattered pieces of her privacy. She felt acutely vulnerable, as if any casual word, any light touch, could drive her to the edges of her own secrets. She did not know how to recollect her old autonomy. Through the day, she could feel the sun of pestilence impending over her as she swam; and her life seemed to be composed of threats against which she had no protection.

Then, late in the afternoon, the River began to run straight into the east, and the terrain through which it flowed underwent a dramatic change. Steep hills lay ahead on both sides like poised antitheses. Those on the right were rocky and barren-a desolation unlike the wilderland of the desert sun. Linden saw at once that they were always dead, that no sun of fertility ever alleviated their detrition. Some ancient and concentrated ruin had blasted their capacity for life long ago, before the Sunbane ever came upon them.

But the hills on the left were a direct contradiction. The power with which they reached her senses sent a shock through all her nerves.

North of the Mithil lay a lush region untouched by stress or wrong. The stands of elm and Gilden which crowned the boundary were naturally tall and vividly healthy; no fertile sun had aggravated their growth, no sun of pestilence had corroded their strong wood and clean sap. The grass sweeping away in long greenswards from the riverbank was pristine with aliantha and amaryllis and buttercups. An analystic air blew from these hills, forever sapid and virginal.

The demarcation between this region and the surrounding terrain was as clear as a line drawn in the dirt; at that border, the Sunbane ended and loveliness began. On the riverbank, like a marker and ward to the hills, stood an old oak, gnarled and sombre, wearing long shrouds of bryony like a cloak of power-a hoary majesty untrammelled by desert or rot. It forbade and welcomed, according to the spirit of those who approached.

“Andelain,” Covenant whispered thickly, as if he wanted to sing, and could not unclose his throat. “Oh, Andelain.”

But Hollian gazed on the Hills with unmitigated abhorrence. Sunder glowered at them as if they posed a danger he could not identify.

And Linden, too, could not share Covenant's gladness. Andelain touched her like the taste of aliantha embodied in the Land. It unveiled itself to her particular percipience with a visionary intensity. It was as hazardous as a drug which could kill or cure, according to the skill of the physician who used it.

Fear and desire tore at her. She had felt the Sunbane too personally, had exposed herself too much in Covenant. She wanted loveliness as if her soul were starving for it. But Hollian's dread was entirely convincing. Andelain's emanations felt as fatal as prophecy against Linden's face. She saw intuitively that the Hills could bereave her of herself as absolutely as any wrong. She had no ability to gauge or control the potency of this drug. Impossible that ordinary trees and grass could articulate so much might! She was already engaged in a running battle against madness. Hollian had said that Andelain drove people mad.

No, she repeated to herself. Not again. Please.

By mute consent, she and her companions stopped for the night among the ruins opposite the oak. A peculiar spell was on them, wrapping them within themselves. Covenant gazed, entranced, at the shimmer of health. But Hollian's revulsion did not waver. Sunder carried distrust in the set of his shoulders. And Linden could not shake her senses free of the deadness of the southern hills. The waste of this region was like a shadow cast by Andelain, a consequence of power. It affected her as if it demonstrated the legitimacy of fear.

Early in the evening, Hollian pricked her palm with the point of her dirk, and used the blood to call up a slight green flame from her Iianar. When she was done, she announced that the morrow would bring a fertile sun. But Linden was locked within her own apprehensions, and hardly heard the eh-Brand.

When she arose in the first grey of dawn with her companions, she said to Covenant, “I'm not going with you.”

The crepuscular air could not conceal his surprise. “Not? Why?” When she did not answer immediately, he urged her. “Linden, this is your chance to taste something besides sickness. You've been so hurt by the Sunbane. Andelain can heal you.”

“No.” She tried to sound certain, but memories of her mother, of the old man's breath, frayed her self-command. She had shared Covenant's illness, but he had never shared his strength. “It only looks healthy. You heard Hollian. Somewhere in there, it's cancerous.” I've already lost too much.

“Cancerous?” he demanded. “Are you losing your eyes? That is Andelain.”

She could not meet his dark stare. “I don't know anything about Andelain. I can't tell. It's too powerful. I can't stand anymore. I could lose my mind in there.”

“You could find it in there,” he returned intensely. "I keep talking about fighting the Sunbane, and you don't know whether to believe me or not. The answer's in there. Andelain denies the Sunbane. Even I can see that. The Sunbane isn't omnipotent.

“Of course Andelain's powerful,” he went on in a rush of ire and persuasion. "It has to be. But we need power. We've got to know how Andelain stays clear.

"I can understand Hollian. Even Sunder. The Sunbane made them what they are. It's cruel and terrible, but it makes sense. A world full of lepers can't automatically trust someone with good nerves. But you. You're a doctor. Fighting sickness is your business.

“Linden.” His hands gripped her shoulders, forced her to look at him. His eyes were gaunt and grim, placing demands upon her as if he believed that anybody could do the things he did. As if he did not know that he owed her his life, that all his show of determination or bravery would already have come to nothing without her. “Come with me.”

In spite of his presumption, she wanted to be equal to him. But her recollections of venom were too acute to be endured. She needed to recover herself. “I can't. I'm afraid.”

The fury in his gaze looked like grief. She dropped her eyes. After a moment, he said distantly, “I'll be back in two or three days. It's probably better this way. Numbness has its advantages. I probably won't be so vulnerable to whatever's in there. When I get back, we'll decide what to do.”

She nodded dumbly. He released her.

The sun was rising, clothed in a cymar of emerald. When she raised her head again, he was in the River, swimming toward Andelain as if he were capable of anything. Green-tinged light danced on the ripples of his passing. The venom was still in him.