Abruptly, he caught himself. His words seemed to beat down the file like ravens, and he felt a hot leper's shame in his cheeks, as though he had defiled the day. For an instant, complete stillness surrounded him-the birds were as silent as if they had been stricken out of the sky, and the stream appeared motionless. In the noon heat, his flesh was slick with sweat.
For that instant, Atiaran gaped aghast at him. Then she cried, “Melenkurion abatha! Do not speak it until you must! I cannot preserve us from such ills.”
The silence shuddered, passed; the stream began chattering again, and a bird swooped by overhead. Covenant wiped his forehead with an unsteady hand. “Then stop treating me as if I'm something I'm not.”
“How can I?” she responded heavily. “You are closed to me, Thomas Covenant. I do not see you.”
She used the word see as if it meant something he did not understand. “What do you mean, you don't see me?” he demanded sourly. “I'm standing right in front of you.”
“You are closed to me,” she repeated. “I do not know whether you are well or ill.”
He blinked at her uncertainly, then realized that she had unwittingly given him a chance to tell her about his leprosy. He took the opportunity; he was angry enough for the job now. Putting aside his incomprehension, he grated, “Ill, of course. I'm a leper.”
At this, Atiaran groaned as if he had just confessed to a crime. “Then woe to the Land, for you have the wild magic and can undo us all.”
“Will you cut that out?” Brandishing his left fist, he gritted, “It's just a ring. To remind me of everything I have to live without. It's got no more-wild magic-than a rock.”
“The Earth is the source of all power,” whispered Atiaran.
With an effort, Covenant refrained from shouting his frustration at her. She was talking past him, reacting to him as if his words meant something he had not intended. “Back up a minute,” he said. “Let's get this straight. I said I was ill. What does that mean to you? Don't you even have diseases in this world?”
For an instant, her lips formed the word diseases. Then a sudden fear tightened her face, and her gaze sprang up past Covenant's left shoulder.
He turned to see what frightened her. He found nothing behind him; but as he scanned the west rim of the file, he heard a scrabbling noise. Pebbles and shale fell into the cut.
“The follower!” Atiaran cried. “Run! Run!”
Her urgency caught him; he spun and followed her as fast as he could go down the file.
Momentarily, he forgot his weakness, the weight of his pack, the heat. He pounded after Atiaran's racing heels as if he could hear his pursuer poised above him on the rim of the file. But soon his lungs seemed to be tearing under the exertion, and he began to lose his balance. When he stumbled, his fragile body almost struck the ground.
Atiaran shouted, “Run!” but he hauled up short, swung trembling around to face the pursuit.
A leaping figure flashed over the edge of the cut and dropped toward him. He dodged away from the plummet, flung up his arms to ward off the figure's swinging arm.
As the attacker passed, he scored the backs of Covenant's fingers with a knife. Then he hit the ground and rolled, came to his feet with his back to the east wall of the cut, his knife weaving threats in front of him.
The sunlight seemed to etch everything starkly in Covenant's vision. He saw the unevennesses of the wall, the shadows stretched under them like rictus.
The attacker was a young man with a powerful frame and dark hair-unmistakably a Stonedownor, though taller than most. His knife was made of stone, and woven into the shoulders of his tunic was his family insignia, a pattern like crossed lightning. Rage and hate strained his features as if his skull were splitting. “Raver!” he yelled. “Ravisher!”
He approached swinging his blade. Covenant was forced to retreat until he stood in the stream, ankle-deep in cool water.
Atiaran was running toward them, though she was too far away to intervene between Covenant and the knife.
Blood welled from the backs of his fingers. His pulse throbbed in the cuts, throbbed in his fingertips.
He heard Atiaran's commanding shout: “Triock!”
The knife slashed closer. He saw it as clearly as if it were engraved on his eyeballs.
His pulse pounded in his fingertips.
The young man gathered himself for a killing thrust.
Atiaran shouted again, “Triock! Are you mad? You swore the Oath of Peace!”
In his fingertips?
He snatched up his hand, stared at it. But his sight was suddenly dim with awe. He could not grasp what was happening.
That's impossible, he breathed in the utterest astonishment. Impossible.
His numb, leprosy-ridden fingers were aflame with pain.
Atiaran neared the two men and stopped, dropped her pack to the ground. She seemed to place a terrible restraint on Triock; he thrashed viciously where he stood. As if he were choking on passion, he spat out, “Kill him! Raver!”
“I forbid!” cried Atiaran. The intensity of her command struck Triock like a physical blow. He staggered back a step,then threw up his head and let out a hoarse snarl of frustration and rage.
Her voice cut sharply through the sound. “Loyalty is due. You took the Oath. Do you wish to damn the Land?”
Triock shuddered. In one conclusive movement, he flung down his knife so that it drove itself into the hilt in the ground by his feet. Straightening fiercely, he hissed at Atiaran, “He has ravished Lena. Last night.”
Covenant could not grasp the situation. Pain was a sensation, a splendour, his fingers had forgotten; he had no answer to it except, Impossible. Impossible. Unnoticed, his blood ran red and human down his wrist.
A spasm twiched across his face. Darkness gathered in the air about him; the atmosphere of the file seethed as if it were full of beating wings, claws wich flashed toward his face. He groaned, “Impossible.”
But Atiaran and Triock were consumed with each other, thier eyes avoided him as if he were a plague spot. As Triock's words penetrated her, she crumbled to her knees, covered her face with her hands, and dropped her forehead to the ground. Her shoulders shook as though she was sobbing, though she made no sound; and over her anguish he said bitterly, “I found her in the hills when this day's sun first touched the plains. You know my love for her. I observed her at the gathering, and was not made happy by the manner in which this fell stanger dazzled her. It wrung my heart that she should be so touched by a man whose comings and goings no one could ever know. So, late at night I enquired of Trell your husband, and learned that she said she meant to sleep with a friend-Terass daughter of Annoria. Then I enquired of Terass-and she knew nothing of Lena's porpose. Then a shadow of fear came upon me-for when have any of these people been liars? I spent the whole of the night searching for her. And at first light I found her, her shift rent and blood about her. She strove to flee from me, but she was weak from cold and pain and sorrow, and in a moment clung in my arms and told me what-what this Raver had done.
“Then I took her to Trell her father. While he cared for her I went away, purposing to kill the stranger. When I saw you, I followed, believing that my purpose was yours also-that you led him into the hills to destroy him. But you mean to save him-him, the ravisher of Lena your daughter! How has he corrupted your heart? You forbid? Atiaran Trell-mate! She was a child fair enough to make a man weep for joy at seeing her-broken without consent or care. Answer me. What have Oaths to do with us?”
The wild, rabid swirl of dark wings forced covenant down until he huddled in the stream. Images reeled across his brain-memories of the leprosarium, of doctors saying, You cannot hope. He had been hit by a police car. He had walked into town to pay his phone bill-to pay his phone bill in person. In a voice abstract with horror, he murmured, “Can't happen.”
Slowly, Atiaran raised her head and spread her arms, as if opening her breast to an impaling thrust from the sky. Her face was carved with pain, a
nd her eyes were dark craters of grief, looking inward on her compromised humanity. “Trell, help me,” she breathed weakly. Then her voice gathered strength, and her anguish seemed to make the air about her ache. “Alas! Alas for the young in the world! Why is the burden of hating ill so hard to bear? Ah, Lena my daughter! I see what you have done. I understand. It is a brave deed, worthy of praise and pride! Forgive me that I cannot be with you in this trial.”
But after a while, her gaze swung outward again. She climbed unsteadily to her feet, and stood swaying for a moment before she rasped hoarsely, “Loyalty is due. I forbid your vengeance.”
“Does he go unpunished?” protested Triock.
“There is peril in the Land,” she answered. “Let the Lords punish him.” A taste of blood sharpened her voice. “They will know what to think of a stranger who attacks the innocent.” Then her weakness returned. “The matter is beyond me. Triock, remember your Oath.” She gripped her shoulders, knotted her fingers in the leaf pattern of her robe as if to hold her sorrow down.
Triock turned toward Covenant. There was something broken in the 'young man's face-a shattered or wasted capacity for contentment, joy. He snarled with the force of an anathema, “I know you, Unbeliever. We will meet again.” Then abruptly he began moving away. He accelerated until he was sprinting, beating out his reproaches on the hard floor of the file. In a moment, he reached a place where the west wall sloped away, and then he was out of sight, gone from the cut into the hills.
“Impossible,” Covenant murmured. “Can't happen. Nerves don't regenerate.” But his fingers hurt as if they were being crushed with pain. Apparently nerves did regenerate in the Land. He wanted to scream against the darkness and the terror, but he seemed to have lost all control of his throat, voice, self.
As if from a distance made great by abhorrence or pity, Atiaran said, “You have made of my heart a wilderland.”
“Nerves don't regenerate.” Covenant's throat clenched as if he were gagging, but he could not scream. “They don't.”
“Does that make you free?” she demanded softly, bitterly. “Does it justify your crime?”
“Crime?” He heard the word like a knife thrust through the beating wings. “Crime?” His blood ran from the cuts as if he were a normal man, but the flow was decreasing steadily. With a sudden convulsion, he caught hold of himself, cried miserably, “I'm in pain!”
The sound of his wail jolted him, knocked the swirling darkness back a step. Pain! The impossibility bridged a gap for him. Pain was for healthy people, people whose nerves were alive.
Can't happen. Of course it can't. That proves it-proves this is all a dream.
All at once, he felt an acute desire to weep. But he was a leper, and had spent too much time learning to dam such emotional channels. Lepers could not afford grief. Trembling feverishly, he plunged his cut hand into the stream.
“Pain is pain,” Atiaran grated. “What is your pain to me? You have done a black deed, Unbeliever violent and cruel, without commitment or sharing. You have given me a pain that no blood or time will wash clean. And Lena my daughter-! Ah, I pray that the Lords will punish-punish!”
The running water was chill and clear. After a moment, his fingers began to sting in the cold, and an ache spread up through his knuckles to his wrist. Red plumed away from his cuts down the stream, but the cold water soon stopped his bleeding. As he watched the current rinse clean his injury, his grief and fear turned to anger. Because Atiaran was his only companion, he growled at her, “Why should I go? None of this matters-I don't give a damn about your precious Land.”
“By the Seven!” Atiaran's hard tone seemed to chisel words out of the air. “You will go to Revelstone if I must drag you each step of the way.”
He lifted his hand to examine it. Triock's knife had sliced him as neatly as a razor; there were no jagged edges to conceal dirt or roughen the healing. But the cut had reached bone in his middle two fingers, and blood still seeped from them. He stood up. For the first time since he had been attacked, he looked at Atiaran.
She stood a few paces from him, with her hands clenched together at her heart as if its pulsing hurt her. She glared at him abominably, and her face was taut with intimations of fierce, rough strength. He could see that she was prepared to fight him to Revelstone if necessary. She shamed him, aggravated his ire. Belligerently, he waved his injury at her. “I need a bandage.”
For an instant, her gaze intensified as if she were about to hurl herself at him. But then she mastered herself, swallowed her pride. She went over to her pack, opened it, and took out a strip of white cloth, which she tore at an appropriate length as she returned to Covenant. Holding his hand carefully, she inspected the cut, nodded her approval of its condition, then bound the soft fabric firmly around his fingers. “I have no hurtloam,” she said, “and cannot take the time to search for it. But the cut looks well, and will heal cleanly.”
When she was done, she went back to her pack. Swinging it onto her shoulders, she said, “Come. We have lost time.” Without a glance at Covenant, she set off down the file.
He remained where he was for a moment, tasting the ache of his fingers. There was a hot edge to his hurt, as if the knife were still in the wound. But he had the answer to it now. The darkness had receded somewhat, and he could look about him without panic. Yet he was still afraid. He was dreaming healthy nerves; he had not realized that he was so close to collapse. Helpless, lying unconscious somewhere, he was in the grip of a crisis-a crisis of his ability to survive. To weather it he would need every bit of discipline or intransigence he could find.
On an impulse, he bent and tried to pull Triock's knife from the ground with his right hand. His half-grip slipped when he tugged straight up on the handle, but by working it back and forth he was able to loosen it, draw it free. The whole knife was shaped and polished out of one flat sliver of stone, with a haft leather-bound for a secure hold, and an edge that seemed sharp enough for shaving. He tested it on his left forearm, and found that it lifted off his hair as smoothly as if the blade were lubricated.
He slipped it under his belt. Then he hitched his pack higher on his shoulders and started after Atiaran.
Nine: Jehannum
BEFORE the afternoon was over, he had lapsed into a dull, hypnotized throb of pain. His pack straps constricted the circulation in his arms, multiplied the aching of his hand; his damp socks gave him blisters to which his toes were acutely and impossibly sensitive; weariness made his muscles as awkward as lead. But Atiaran moved constantly, severely, ahead of him down the file, and he followed her as if he were being dragged by the coercion of her will. His eyes became sightless with fatigue; he lost all sense of time, of movement, of everything except pain. He hardly knew that he had fallen asleep, and he felt a detached, impersonal sense of surprise when he was finally shaken awake.
He found himself lying in twilight on the floor of the file. After rousing him, Atiaran handed him a bowl of hot broth. Dazedly, he gulped at it. When the bowl was empty, she took it and handed him a large flask of springwine. He gulped it also.
From his stomach, the springwine seemed to send long, soothing fingers out to caress and relax each of his raw muscles, loosening them until he felt that he could no longer sit up. He adjusted his pack as a pillow, then lay down to sleep again. His last sight before his eyes fell shut was of Atiaran, sitting enshadowed on the far side of the graveling pot, her face set relentlessly toward the north.
The next day dawned clear, cool, and fresh. Atiaran finally succeeded in awakening Covenant as darkness was fading from the sky. He sat up painfully, rubbed his face as if it had gone numb during the night. A moment passed before he recollected the new sensitivity of his nerves; then he flexed his hands, stared at them as if he had never seen them before. They were alive, alive.
He pushed the blanket aside to uncover his feet. When he squeezed his toes through his boots, the pain of his blisters answered sharply. His toes were as alive as his fingers.
His guts twisted sickly. With a groan, he asked himself, How long-how long is this going to go on? He did not feel that he could endure much more.
Then he remembered that he had not had on a blanket when he went to sleep the night before. Atiaran must have spread it over him.
He winced, avoided her eyes by shambling woodenly to the stream to wash his face. Where did she find the courage to do such things for him? As he splashed cold water on his neck and cheeks, he found that he was afraid of her again.
But she did not act like a threat. She fed him, checked the bandage on his injured hand, packed up the camp as if he were a burden to which she had already become habituated. Only the lines of sleeplessness around her eyes and the grim set of her mouth showed that she was clenching herself.
When she was ready to go, he gave himself a deliberate VSE, then forced his shoulders into the straps of his pack and followed her down the file as if her stiff back were a demand he could not refuse.
Before the day was done, he was an expert on that back. It never compromised; it never admitted a doubt about its authority, never offered the merest commiseration. Though his muscles tightened until they became as inarticulate as bone-though the aching rictus of his shoulders made him hunch in his pack like a cripple-though the leagues aggravated his sore feet until he hobbled along like a man harried by vultures-her back compelled him like an ultimatum: keep moving or go mad; I permit no other alternatives. And he could not deny her. She stalked ahead of him like a nightmare figure, and he followed as if she held the key to his existence.
Late in the morning, they left the end of the file, and found themselves on a heathered hillside almost directly north of the high, grim finger of Kevin's Watch. They could see the South Plains off to the west; and as soon as the file ended, the stream turned that way, flowing to some distant union with the Mithil. But Atiaran led Covenant still northward, weaving her way along fragmentary tracks and across unpathed leas which bordered the hills on her right.
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