White Gold Wielder t2cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Visions he could neither face nor shun seemed to protract the night; yet dawn and Cail's rousing touch came too early. He awoke with a jerk and found himself staring at the dense growth. His companions were already up. While Pitchwife and Mistweave prepared a meal, and Honninscrave dismantled the sleds, the First studied the choked terrain, clenching a tuneless hum between her teeth. A gap among the peaks sent an early shaft of light onto the vegetation directly in front of the camp. The sun would touch the company soon.

  Covenant's skin crawled as he watched the verdure writhe and grow. The contrast between the places where the sun hit and where it did not only made the effect more eerie and ominous. In the stony soil among the foothills, there were no trees But the hardy, twisted shrubs were already as tall as trees; thistles and other weeds crowded the ground between the trunks; huge slabs of lichen clung to the rocks like scabs. And everything the sun touched grew so rapidly that it seemed animate-a form of helpless flesh tortured mercilessly toward the sky. He had forgotten how horrific the Sunbane truly was. He dreaded the moment when he would have to descend into that lush green anguish.

  Then the sunlight fell through the gap onto the company.

  At the last moment, the First, Honninscrave, and Pitchwife had found rocks on which to stand. Under Mistweave's feet lay the stone with which he had formerly shielded his campfires from ice and snow.

  Distantly, Linden nodded at the caution of the Giants. “Cail's got something you don't,” she murmured. “You need the protection.” But Vain and Findail required no defence; and Covenant and Linden had their footwear. Together, they faced the onset of the sun.

  As it first crested the gap, the sun appeared normal. For that reason, at least this much of the foothills remained free of vegetation. Yet the company stayed motionless, suspended and silent in an anticipation like dread. And before their eyes the sun changed. A green aura closed around it, altering the light. Even the strip of bare ground between the end of the snow and the beginning of the vegetation took on an emerald timbre.

  Because of the winter which still held the mountains, the air was not warm. But Covenant found that he was sweating.

  Grimly, Linden turned her back on the sun. The Giants went to their tasks. Vain's constant, black, ambiguous smile betrayed no reaction. But Findail's pain marked face looked more aggrieved than ever Covenant thought he saw the Elohim's hands trembling.

  Shortly after the company had eaten, Honninscrave finished reducing the sleds to firewood. He and Mistweave packed their supplies into huge bundles for themselves and smaller ones for Pitchwife and the First. Soon Covenant's companions were prepared to commence the day's journey.

  “Giantfriend,” the First asked sternly, “is there peril for us here other than that which we have all witnessed?”

  Peril, he thought dumbly. If the Riders of the Clave don't come this far north. And nothing else has changed. “Not under this sun,” he replied with sweat in his voice. “But if we stand still too long, we'll have trouble moving again.”

  The Swordmain nodded. “That is plain.”

  Drawing her blade, she took two long steps down the hillside and began hacking tall thistles out of her way.

  Honninscrave followed her. With his bulk and muscle, he widened her path for the rest of the company.

  Covenant compelled himself to take his position at Pitchwife's back. Cail followed between the Unbeliever and Linden. Then came Mistweave, with Vain and Findail inseparably behind him.

  In that formation, the failed quest for the One Tree met the atrocity of the Sunbane.

  For the morning and part of the afternoon, they managed a surprising pace. Monstrous scrub brush and weeds gave way to stands of immense, raw bracken clotted with clumps of grass; and every added degree of the sun's arc made each frond and leaf and stem more desperately upward, as frantic as the damned. Yet the First and Honninscrave forged ahead as fast as Covenant and Linden could comfortably walk. The air became warmer, noticeably more humid, as the snows and elevation of the mountains were left behind. Although Covenant had added his robe to Pitchwife's bundle, he perspired constantly. But his days in the range had toughened him somewhat; he was able to keep the pace.

  But toward mid-afternoon the company entered a region like a surreal madland. Juniper trees as contorted as ghouls sprawled thickly against each other, strangled by the prodigious vines which festooned them like the web of a gargantuan and insane spider. And between the vine-stems and tree trunks the ground was profuse with lurid orchids that smelled like poison. The First struck one fierce blow against the nearest vine, then snatched back her green-slick blade to see if she had damaged it: the stem was as hard as ironwood. Around her, the trees and vines rustled like execration. In order to advance at all, the companions had to clamber and squirm awkwardly among the hindrances.

  Night caught them in the middle of the region, with no stone in sight and scarcely enough space for them to lay their blankets between the trunks. But when Cail roused the company the next morning, they found that he had somehow contrived to collect sufficient small rocks to protect two of the Giants. And the stone which Mistweave still carried could bold two more. Thus warded, they braced themselves to meet the sun.

  When its first touch filtered insidiously down through the choked trees, Covenant flinched; and Linden jerked a hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp.

  They could see only pieces of the sun's aura But those pieces were red. The colour of pestilence.

  “Two days!” Covenant spat to keep himself from groaning. “It's getting worse.”

  The First stared at him. Bitterly, he explained that the Sunbane had formerly moved in a cycle of three days. Any shortening of that period meant that its power was increasing. And that meant-But he could not say such things aloud. The hurt of them went too deep. It meant that Sunder and Hollian had failed. Or that the na-Mhoram had found a source of blood as large as his malice. Or that Lord Foul was now confident of victory, and therefore the Clave no longer made any pretence of holding back the Sunbane.

  Glowering, the First absorbed Covenant's answer. After a moment, she asked carefully, "May it be that this is but a variation-that the essential period remains unaltered?”

  That was possible. He remembered one sun of two days. But when he turned to Linden for her opinion, she was not looking at him. Her band had not come down from her mouth. Her teeth were closed on the knuckle of her index finger, and a drop of blood marked her chin.

  “Linden.” He grabbed at her wrist, yanked her hand away.

  Her dismay slapped at him. “The sun of pestilence.” Her voice came twisted and harsh from her knotted throat. “Have you forgotten what it's like? We don't have any voure.”

  At that, a new fear stung Covenant. Voure was the pungent sap of a certain plant-a sap that warded off the insects which thrived under a red sun. And more: it was also an antidote for the Sunbane-sickness. That pestilential disease could attack through any kind of exposed cut or injury. “HeIIfire,” he breathed. Then snapped, “Get a bandage on that finger!” His arm was healed enough to be safe; but this sun might prove the small marks on her knuckle fatal.

  Around him, steam rolled like a miasma. Wherever the light touched the vines and trunks, their bark opened and began to ooze. The steam stank of decomposition.

  Nameless insects started to whine like augers through the mounting stench. Suddenly, Covenant caught up with Linden's apprehension. In addition to everything else, she had realized before he did that even a Giant might sicken and fail from breathing too much of that vapour-or from being bitten by too many of those insects.

  She had not moved. Her eyes appeared glazed and inward, as if she could not move. Small red beads formed around her knuckle and dropped to the dirt.

  Fierce with exasperation and alarm, Covenant snarled at her, “By hell! I said, get a bandage on that finger. And think of something. We're in big trouble.”

  She flinched. “No,” she whispered. The delicacy of her features seemed to cru
mble. “No. You don't understand. You don't feel it. It was never this-I can't remember- “ She swallowed heavily to keep herself from crying out. Then her tone became flat and dead. ”You don't feel it. It's hideous. You can't fight it.”

  Wisps of steam passed in front of her face as if she, too, had begun to rot.

  Urgently, Covenant grabbed her shoulders, ground his numb fingers into her. “Maybe I can't. But you can. You're the Sun-Sage. What do you think you're here for?”

  The Sun-Sage. Elohim had given her that title. For an instant, her gaze became wild; and he feared he had torn the thin fabric of her sanity. But then her eyes focused on him with an emotional impact that made him wince. Abruptly, she was alabaster and adamantine in his grasp. “Let go of me,” she articulated distinctly. "You don't give enough to have the right.”

  He pleaded with her mutely, but she did not relent. When he dropped his arms and stepped back, she turned away as if she were dismissing him from her life.

  To the First, she said, “Get some green wood. Branches or whatever you can find.” She sounded oddly hard and brittle, not to be touched. “Soak the ends in vitrim and light them. The smoke should give us some protection.”

  The First cocked an eyebrow at the tension between Covenant and Linden. But the Giants did not hesitate: they were acquainted with Linden's health-sense. In moments, they had wrenched several boughs the size of brands from nearby trees. Pitchwife muttered mournfully at the idea of using his precious vitrim for such a purpose, but he handed one of his pouches to the First readily enough. Shortly, the four Giants and Cail held flaming branches that guttered and spat with enough smoke to palliate the reek of rot. Outsized flying insects hummed angrily around the area, then shot off in search of other prey.

  When the supplies had been repacked, the First turned to Linden for instructions, tacitly recognizing the change which had taken place in the Chosen Covenant was Giantfriend and ring-wielder; but it was Linden's percipience upon which the company depended now for survival.

  Without a glance at Covenant, Linden nodded. Then she took Pitchwife's place behind the First and Honninscrave; and the company started moving.

  Beclouded with smoke and rot, they struggled on through the wild region. Under the particular corruption of the sun's scarlet aura, vines which had been too hard for the First's sword were now marked with swellings that burst and sores that ran. Fetor and borers took hold of some of the trees, ate out their hearts. Others lost wide strips of bark, exposing bald wood fatally veined with termites. The narcoleptic sweetness of the orchids penetrated the acrid smoke from time to time Covenant felt that tie was labouring through the fruition of what Lord Foul had striven to achieve ten years and three and a half millennia ago-the desecration of all of the Land's health to leprosy. Here the Despiser emerged in the throes of victory. The beauty of Land and Law had been broken. With smoke in his eyes and revulsion in his guts, images of gangrene and pain on all sides Covenant found himself praying for a sun of only two days.

  Yet the red sun produced one benefit: the rotting of the wood allowed the First to begin cutting a path once more. The company was able to improve its pace. And finally the juniper wilderness opened into an area of tall, thick grass as corrupt and cloying as a tarpit. The First called a halt for a brief meal and a few swallows of diamondraught.

  Covenant needed the liquor, but he could hardly eat. His gaze refused to leave the swelling of Linden's bitten finger.

  Sunbane-sickness, he thought miserably. She had suffered from it once before. Sunder and Hollian, who were familiar with such sickness, had believed that she would die. He would never forget the look of her as she had lain helpless in the grip of convulsions as flagrant as his nightmares. Only her health-sense and voure had saved her.

  That memory compelled him to risk her ire. More harshly than he intended, he began, “I thought I told you- ”

  “And I told you,” she retorted, “to leave me alone. I don't need you to mother me.”

  But he faced her squarely, forced her to recognize his concern. After a moment, her belligerence failed. Frowning, she turned her head away. “You don't have to worry about it,” she sighed. “I know what I'm doing. It helps me concentrate.”

  “Helps-?” He did not know how to understand her.

  “Sunder was right,” she responded. “This is the worst-the sun of pestilence. It sucks at me-or soaks into me-I don't know how to describe it. I become it. It becomes me.” The simple act of putting her plight into words made her shudder. Deliberately, she raised her hand, studied her hurt finger. "The pain. The way it scares me. It helps make the distinction. It keeps me separate.”

  Covenant nodded. What else could he do? Her vulnerability had become terrible to him. Huskily, he said, “Don't let it get too bad.” Then he made another attempt to force food down into his knotted stomach.

  The rest of the day was atrocious. And the next day was worse. But early in the evening, amid the screaming of numberless cicadas and the piercing frustration of huge, smoke-daunted mosquitoes, the company reached a region of hills where wide boulders still protruded from the surrounding morass of moss and ground-ivy. That proved to be a fortuitous camping-place; for when the sun rose again, it was wreathed in dusty brown.

  After only two days.

  The elevation of the rocks protected the travellers from the effect of the desert sun on the putrefying vegetation.

  Everything that the fertile sun had produced and the sun of pestilence had blighted might as well have been made of wax. The brown clad sun melted it all, reduced every form of plant fiber, every kind of sap or juice, every monstrous insect to a necrotic grey sludge. The few bushes in the area slumped like over-heated candles; moss and ivy sprawled into Physician's Plight spilth that formed turbid pools in the low places of the terrain; the bugs of dawn fell like clotted drops of rain. Then the sludge denatured as if the desert sun drank it away.

  Long before mid-morning, every slope and hollow and span of ground had been burned to naked ruin and dust.

  For the Giants, that process was more horrible than anything else they had seen. Until now, only the scale of the Sunbane's power had been staggering. Verdure grew naturally, and insects and rot could be included in the normal range of experience. But nothing had prepared Covenant's companions for the quick and entire destruction of so much prodigious vegetation and pestilence.

  Staring about her, the First breathed, “Ah, Cable Seadreamer! There is no cause for wonder that you lacked voice to utter such visions. The wonder is that you endured to bear them at all-and that you bore them in loneliness.”

  Pitchwife clung to her as if he were reeling inwardly. Open nausea showed in Mistweave's face. He had learned to doubt himself, and now the things he could no longer trust covered all the world. But Honninscrave's deep eyes flamed hotly-the eyes of a man who knew now beyond question that he was on the right path.

  Grimly, Linden demanded a knife from Pitchwife. For a moment, he could not answer her. “But at last the First stirred, turned from the harsh vista of the waste; and her husband turned with her.

  Dazedly, Pitchwife gave Linden his blade. She used its tip to lance her infected finger. With vitrim, she cleansed the wound thoroughly, then bound it in a light bandage. When she was done, she lifted her head; and her gaze was as intense as Honninscrave's. Like him, she now appeared eager to go forward.

  Or like High Lord Elena, who had been driven by inextricable abhorrence and love, and by lust for power, to the mad act of breaking the Law of Death. After only three days under the Sunbane, Linden appeared capable of such things.

  Soon the company started south-westward again across a wasteland which had become little more than an anvil for the fierce brutality of the sun.

  It brought back more of the past to Covenant. Heat haze as thick as hallucination and dust bleached to the colour of dismay made his memories vivid. He and Linden had been summoned to Kevin's Watch during a day of rain; but that night Sander's father, Nassic, had been
murdered, and the next day had arisen a desert sun-and Covenant and Linden had encountered a Raver amid the hostility of Mithil Stone' down.

  Many of the consequences had fallen squarely upon Sunder's shoulders. As the Stonedown's Graveler, he had already been required to shed the lives of his own wife and son so that their blood would serve the village. And then the Raver's actions had cost him his father, had compelled him to sacrifice his friend, Marid, to the Sunbane, and had faced him with the necessity of bleeding his mother to death. Such things had driven him to flee his duty for the sake of the Unbeliever and the Chosen-and for his own sake, so that he would be spared the responsibility of more killing.

  Yet during that same desert sun Covenant's life had also been changed radically. The corruption of that sun had made Marid monstrous enough to inflict the Despiser's malice. Out in the wasteland of the South Plains, Marid had nailed venom between the bones of Covenant's forearm, crucifying him to the fate Lord Foul had prepared for him.

  The fate of fire. In a nightmare of wild magic, his own terrible love and grief tore down the world.

  The sun would not let him think of anything else. The company had adequate supplies of water, diamondraught, and food; and when the haze took on the attributes of vertigo, leeched the strength out of Covenant's legs, Honninscrave carried him. Foamfollower had done the same for him more than once, bearing him along the way of hope and doom. But now there was only haze and vertigo and despair-and the remorseless Hammer blow of the sun.

  That phase of the Sunbane also lasted for only two days. But it was succeeded by another manifestation of pestilence.

  The red-tinged heat was less severe. The stricken Plains contained nothing which could rot. And here the insect-life was confined to creatures that made their homes in the ground. Yet this sun was arduous and bitter after its own fashion. It brought neither moisture nor shade up out of the waste. And before it ended, the travellers began to encounter stag-beetles and scorpions as big as wolves among the low bills. But the First's sword kept such threats at bay. And Physician's Plight whenever Honninscrave and Mistweave took on the added weight of Covenant and Linden, the company made good speed.