The Wounded Land t2cotc-1

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  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 bre
ak 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."