The Wounded Land

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  That morning, the sun rose in red pestilence. It tinged the stark outlines of the wilderland crimson, making the desert roseate, lovely, and strange, like a gilded burial ground; but though he strained his sight until his brain danced with images of fire, Covenant could not descry any lessening of the Sunbane. Yet Linden gave a fierce nod as if she had been vindicated. And after a moment, Brinn said impassively, “The Chosen is farsighted.” He used her title like a recognition of power. “The corruption about the sun has lessened.”

  “I am surpassed,” Sunder muttered in frustration. “I do not see this lessening.”

  “You will,” Linden replied. “We’re getting closer.”

  Covenant was suddenly dizzy with hope. “Closer to what?” Was the Sunbane failing?

  “Inquire of the Chosen.” Brinn’s shrug disavowed all responsibility for what he saw. “We know nothing of this.”

  Covenant turned to her.

  “I’ll tell you.” She did not meet his gaze. “When I’m sure.”

  He swallowed a curse, gritted himself still. It’s too much, she had said. I’ll try. He understood. She was trying. She wanted to trust what she saw and feared to be misled, to be hurt again. With difficulty, he left her alone.

  She continued to stare eastward while the Haruchai distributed food, water, and voure. She ate heedlessly, ignoring Brinn’s people as they readied the Coursers. But then, just as Sunder brought the beasts forward, her arm stabbed out, and she barked, “There!”

  Brinn glanced at the sun. “Yes. The corruption regains its strength.”

  Covenant groaned to himself. No wonder she did not wish to explain what she saw. How could she bear it?

  Morosely he mounted Clash behind Linden and Brinn. The quest moved out across the ragged wasteland.

  Under this sun, the desert became a place of silence and scorpions. Only the rattle of the Coursers’ hooves punctuated the windless air; and soon that noise became part of the silence as well. Insects scuttled over the rocks, or waded the sand, and made no sound. The sky was as empty of life as a tomb. Slowly Covenant’s mood became red and fatal. The Plains seemed eerie with all the blood he had shed. Involuntarily he toyed with his ring, turning it around his finger as if his bones itched for fire. Yet he loathed killing, loathed himself. And he was afraid.

  We have to accept who we are. Where had he learned the arrogance or at least the insensitivity to say such things?

  That night, his memories and dreams made his skin burn as if he were eager for immolation, for a chance to anneal his old guilt in flame. Lena filled his sight as if she had been chiseled on the backs of his eyes. A child, in spite of her body’s new maturity. He had struck her, knotted his hands in her shift and rent—The memory of her scream was distilled nightmare to him. A moral leper.

  You are mine.

  He was a creature of wild magic and doubt; and the long night, like the whole Land stretched helpless under the Sunbane, was also a desert.

  But the next morning, when the sun rose in its crimson infestation, he, too, could see that its aurora was weaker. It seemed pale, almost uncertain. Sunder and Hollian could see it as well.

  And this time the weakness did not vanish until midmorning. Ascending from the first quarter of the sky, the aura crossed a threshold; and the Sunbane closed over the Plains like a lid. Intuitions tried to clarify themselves in Covenant’s head; he felt that he should have been able to name them. But he could not. Lacking Linden’s eyes, he seemed also to lack the ability to interpret what he saw. A strange blindness—

  That evening, the company reached Landsdrop.

  Now Covenant knew where he was. Landsdrop was the precipice which separated the Upper Land in the west from the Lower Land in the east. It stretched roughly north-northwest from deep in the Southron Range far toward the unexplored Northron Climbs. Many leagues south of him, Mount Thunder, ancient Gravin Threndor, crouched against the cliff, kneeling with its knees on the Lower Land and its elbows on the Upper. Deep in its dark roots lay the place where the Illearth Stone had been found. And deep in its dark heart was the secret chamber of Kiril Threndor, where Lord Foul the Despiser now made his home.

  The sun was setting as the quest halted. The shadow of Landsdrop, three or four thousand feet high in this region, obscured all the east. But Covenant knew what lay ahead. The deadly marsh of Sarangrave Flat.

  In past ages, the Sarangrave had become what it was—a world of intricate waterways, exotic life, and cunning peril—through the effects of the river called the Denies Course. This water emerged between the knees of Mount Thunder from the catacombs in the bowels of the mountain, where it had run through Wightwarrens and Demondim breeding dens, through charnals and offal pits, laboratories and forges, until it was polluted by the most irrefragable filth. As sewage spread throughout the Flat from the river, it corrupted a once-fair region, changed a marsh home for egrets and orchids into a wild haven for the misborn. During the last wars, Lord Foul had found much of the raw material for his armies in Sarangrave Flat.

  Covenant knew about the Flat because at one time he had seen it for himself, from Landsdrop to the south of Mount Thunder. He had seen with Land-sharpened eyes, vision he no longer possessed. But he had other knowledge of the region as well. He had heard some things during his visits to Revelstone. And he had learned more from Runnik of the Bloodguard. At one time, Runnik had accompanied Korik and two Lords, Hyrim and Shetra, on a mission to Seareach, to ask the aid of the Giants against Lord Foul. Lord Shetra had been slain in the Sarangrave, and Runnik had barely survived to bring back the tale.

  Covenant’s guts squirmed at the thought of the Sarangrave under a sun of pestilence. Beyond doubt, he was going to have to tell Runnik’s tale to his companions.

  The Haruchai set camp a stone’s throw from the great cliff because Covenant refused to go any closer in the dark; he already felt too susceptible to the lure of precipices. After he had eaten, fortified himself with metheglin, he huddled near the jumping allusions of the campfire, wrapped his memories around him, and asked the quest to listen.

  Linden sat down opposite him. He wanted to feel that she was nearby; but the intervening fire distanced her. Sunder and Hollian were vague at the edges of his sight. His attention narrowed to the crackling wood and the recollection of Runnik’s tale.

  Fist and faith, the Bloodguard had said. We will not fail. But they had failed. Covenant knew that now. They had failed, and fallen into Corruption, and died. The Vow had been broken. And the Giants had been slain.

  But such things were not part of what he had to tell. To control the old ache of remembrance, he envisioned Runnik’s face before him. The Bloodguard had stood, with a pang in his eyes, before High Lord Elena, Lord Mhoram, Hile Troy, and the Unbeliever. A bonfire had made the night poignant. Covenant could recall Runnik’s exact words. The attacks of the lurker. The fall of Lord Shetra. Bloody hell.

  In a dull tone, he told the essentials of that tale. When he had first seen the Sarangrave, it had been a place of fervid luxuriance and subtle death: alive with shy water-bred animals and malicious trees; adorned with pools of clear poison; waylaid with quicksand; spangled with flowers of loveliness and insanity. A place where nature had become vastly treacherous, polluted and hungry. But not evil. It was blameless in the same way that storms and predators were blameless. The Giants, who knew how to be wary, had always been able to travel the Flat.

  But forty years later, when Korik’s mission had looked out from Landsdrop, the Sarangrave had changed. Slumbering ill had been stirred to wakefulness. And this ill, which Runnik had called the lurker of the Sarangrave, had snatched Lord Shetra to her death, despite the fact that she had been under the protection of fifteen Bloodguard. Fifteen— The lurker had been alert to strength, attracted to power. First the Ranyhyn, then the Bloodguard themselves, had unwittingly brought peril down on Korik’s mission. And of the messengers Korik had sent to carry the tale back to the High Lord, only Runnik had survived.

  After Cove
nant fell silent, his companions remained still for a moment. Then Hollian asked unsurely, “May we not ride around this place of risk?”

  Covenant did not raise his head. “That used to be a hundred leagues out of the way. I don’t know what it is now.” Had Sarangrave Flat grown or dwindled under the Sunbane?

  “We have not such time,” Sunder said immediately. “Do you desire to confront a second Grim? The Clave reads us as we speak of such matters. When I place my hand upon the iron, I feel the eyes of the Banefire fixed in my heart. They hold no benison.”

  “The Clave can’t—” Linden began, then stopped herself.

  “The Clave,” Covenant responded, “kills people every day. To keep that bloody Banefire going. How many lives do you think a hundred leagues are going to cost?”

  Hollian squirmed. “Mayhap this lurker no longer lives? The Sunbane alters all else. Will not Sarangrave Flat be altered also?”

  “No,” Linden said. But when Covenant and the Stonedownors looked at her sharply, she muttered, “I’ll tell you about it in the morning.” Wrapping blankets around her as if they were a buckler against being touched, she turned away.

  For a while after Sunder and Hollian had gone to their rest, Covenant sat and watched the fire die, striving with himself, trying to resist the way Landsdrop plucked at the bottom of his mind, to guess what Linden had learned about the Sunbane, to find the courage he needed for the Sarangrave.

  You are mine.

  He awoke, haggard and power-haunted, shortly before dawn and found that Linden and the Stonedownors, with Cail, Harn, and Stell, had already left their beds to stand on the edge of Landsdrop. The air was cold; and his face felt stiff and dirty, as if his beard were the grip of his dreams, clutching his visage with, unclean fingers. Shivering, he arose, slapped his arms to warm them, then accepted a drink of metheglin from Brinn.

  As Covenant drank, Brinn said, “Ur-Lord.”

  His manner caught Covenant’s attention like a hand on his shoulder. Brinn looked as inscrutable as stone in the crepuscular air; yet his very posture gave an impression of importance.

  “We do not trust these Coursers.”

  Covenant frowned. Brinn had taken him by surprise.

  “The old tellers,” Brinn explained, “know the tale which Runnik of the Bloodguard told to High Lord Elena. We have heard that the mission to the Giants of Seareach was betrayed to the lurker of the Sarangrave by Earthpower. The Earthpower of the Ranyhyn was plain to all who rode them. And the Vow of the Bloodguard was a thing of Earthpower.

  “But we have sworn no life-shaping Vow. The wild magic need not be used. The Graveler and the eh-Brand need not employ their lore. The lurker need not be aware of us.”

  Covenant nodded as he caught Brinn’s meaning. “The Coursers,” he muttered. “Creatures of the Sunbane. You’re afraid they’ll give us away.”

  “Yes, ur-Lord.”

  Covenant winced, then shrugged. “We don’t have any choice. We’ll lose too much time on foot.”

  Brinn acquiesced with a slight bow. For an instant, the Haruchai seemed so much like Bannor that Covenant almost groaned. Bannor, too, would have voiced his doubt—and then would have accepted Covenant’s decision without question. Suddenly Covenant felt that his Dead were coming back to life, that Bannor was present in Brinn, impassive and infrangibly faithful; that Elena was reborn in Linden. The thought wrenched his heart.

  But then a shout snatched him toward Landsdrop.

  The sun was rising.

  Gritting himself against incipient vertigo, he hurried to join his companions on the lip of the cliff.

  Across the east, the sun came up in pale red, as if it had just begun to ooze blood. Light washed the top of the precipice, but left all the Lower Land dark, like a vast region where night was slowly sucked into the ground. But though he could see nothing of the Flat, the sun itself was vivid to him.

  Its aura was weaker.

  Weaker than it had been the previous morning.

  Linden stared intently at it for a moment, then whirled and sent her gaze arcing up and down the length of Landsdrop. Covenant could hear insects burring as if they had been resurrected from the dead ground.

  “By God.” She was exultant. “I was right.”

  He held himself still, hardly daring to exhale.

  “This is the line.” She spoke in bursts of excitement, comprehension. “Landsdrop. It’s like a border.” Her hands traced consequences in the air. “You’ll see. When the sun passes over the cliff—at noon—the Sunbane will be as strong as ever.”

  Covenant swallowed thickly. “Why?”

  “Because the atmosphere is different. It doesn’t have anything to do with the sun. That corona is an illusion. We see it because we’re looking at the sun through the atmosphere. The Sunbane is in the air. The sun doesn’t change. But the air—”

  He did not interrupt. But in the back of his mind he sifted what she said. Some of it made sense: the power required literally to change the sun was inconceivable.

  “The Sunbane is like a filter. A way of warping the normal energy of the sun. Corrupting it.” She aimed her words at him as if she were trying to drive insight through his blindness. “And it’s all west from here. The Upper Land. What you see out there”—she jerked her head eastward—“is just spillover. That’s why it looks weak. The Clave won’t be able to reach us anymore. And the Sarangrave might be just as you remember it.”

  All—? Covenant thought. But how? Winds shift—storms—

  Linden seemed to see his question in his face. “It’s in the air,” she insisted. “But it’s like an emanation. From the ground. It must have something to do with the Earthpower you keep talking about. It’s a corruption of the Earthpower.”

  A corruption of the Earthpower! At those words, his head reeled, and his own vague intuitions came into focus. She was right. Absolutely. He should have been able to figure it out for himself. The Staff of Law had been destroyed—

  And Lord Foul had made his new home in Mount Thunder, which crouched on the edge of Landsdrop, facing west. Naturally, the Despiser would concentrate his Sunbane on the Upper Land. Most of the east already lay under his power. It was all so clear. Only a blind man could fail to see such things.

  For a long moment, other facets of the revelation consumed him. Lord Foul had turned the Earthpower itself against the Land.

  The Sunbane was limited in its reach. But if it became intense enough, deep enough—

  But then he seemed to hear for the first time something else Linden had said. The Sarangrave might be—

  Bloody hell! He forced himself into motion, drove his reluctant bones toward Landsdrop so that he could look over the edge.

  The shadow of the horizon had already descended halfway down the cliff. Faint, pink light began to reflect off the waters of the Sarangrave. Pale jewels, rosy and tenuous, spread across the bottom of the shadow, winking together to form reticular lines, intaglios, like a map of the vanishing night. Or a snare. As the sun rose, the gems yellowed and grew more intricate. In links and interstices, they articulated the venous life of the Flat—explication, trap, and anatomy in one. Then all the waterways burned white, and the sun itself shone into Sarangrave Flat.

  After five days in the wasted plains, Covenant felt that the lush green and water below him were exquisite, lovely and fascinating, as only adders and belladonna could be. But Linden stood beside him, staring white-eyed at the marsh. Her lips said over and over again, Oh, my God. But the words made no sound.

  Covenant’s heart turned over in fear. “What do you see?”

  “Do you want to go down there?” Horror strangled her voice. “Are you crazy?”

  “Linden!” he snapped, as if her dread were an accusation he could not tolerate. The backs of his hands burned venomously, lusting of their own volition to strike her. Was she blind to the pressures building in him? Deaf to the victims of the Clave? “I can’t see what you see.”

  “I’m a doctor,” she panted
as if she were bleeding internally. “Or I was. I can’t bear all this evil.”

  No! His anger vanished at the sight of her distress. Don’t say that. You’ll damn us both. “I understand. Better than anybody. Tell me what it is.”

  She did not raise her eyes, would not look at him. “It’s alive.” Her voice was a whisper of anguish. “The whole thing’s alive.” Gibbon had promised her that she would destroy the Land. “It’s hungry.” Covenant knew nothing about her. “It’s like a Raver.”

  A Raver? He wanted to shout, What kind of person are you? Why did Foul choose you? But he crushed himself to quietness. “Is it a Raver?”

  She shook her head. She went on shaking her head, as if she could not reach the end of all the things she wanted to deny. “Ravers are more”—she had to search herself for an adequate description—“more specific. Self-conscious. But it’s still possession,” She said that word as if it sickened her. Her hands fumbled toward her mouth. “Help me.”

  “No.” He did not mean to refuse her; his arms ached to hold her. But that was not what she needed. “You can stand it. That old man chose you for a reason.” Groping for ways to succor her, he said, “Concentrate on it. Use what you see to help yourself. Know what you’re up against. Can that thing see us? Is it that specific? If we try to cross—will it know we’re there?”

  She closed her eyes, covered them to shut out the sight. But then she forced herself to look again. Struggling against revulsion, she jerked out, “I don’t know. It’s so big. If it doesn’t notice us— If we don’t attract its attention—”

  If, he finished for her, we don’t show the kind of power it feeds on. Yes. But a sudden vision of wild magic stunned him. He did not know how long he could contain the pressure. With a wrench, he made himself move, turned to Brinn, then winced at the way his voice spattered emotion. “Get the Coursers ready. Find a way down there. As soon as we eat, we’re going through.”

  Swinging away from the Haruchai, he almost collided with Sunder and Hollian. They were leaning against each other as if for support. The knots at the corners of Sunder’s jaw bulged; a frown of apprehension or dismay incused his forehead. The young eh-Brand’s features were pale with anxiety.