The Wounded Land t2cotc-1

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  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 swell
ing 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.