When they had eaten, Sunder picked the rest of the melons and put them in his sack. He appeared to be in a lighter mood; perhaps his ability to provide food had strengthened his sense of how much he was needed; or perhaps he was now less afraid of pursuit. Firmly, he announced, “We must leave the riverbed. We will find no water here.” He nodded toward the east bank. “At first it will be arduous. But as the trees mount, they will shade the ground, slowing the undergrowth. But mark me-I have said that the fertile sun is perilous. We must travel warily, lest we fall among plants which will not release us. While this sun holds, we will sojourn in daylight, sleeping only at night.”
Covenant rubbed lightly at the scabs on his forearm, eyed the rim of the bank. “Did you say water?”
“As swiftly as strength and chance permit.”
Strength, Covenant muttered. Chance. He lacked one, and did not trust the other. But he did not hesitate. “Let's go.”
Both men looked at Linden.
She rose slowly to her feet. She did not raise her eyes; but she nodded mutely.
Sunder glanced a question at Covenant; but Covenant had no answer. With a shrug, the Graveller lifted his sack to his shoulder and started down the river bottom. Covenant followed, with Linden behind him.
Sunder avoided the grass and weeds as much as possible until he reached a place where the sides were less steep. There he dug his feet into the dirt, and scrambled upward.
He had to burrow through the underbrush which lipped the slope to gain level ground. Covenant watched until the Graveller disappeared, then attempted the climb himself. Handholds on long dangling clumps of grass aided his ascent. After a moment of slippage, he crawled into Sunder's burrow.
Carefully, he moved along the tunnel of bracken and brush which Sunder had brunted clear. The teeming vegetation made progress difficult; he could not rise above his hands and knees. He felt enclosed by incondign verdancy, a savage ecstasy of growth more insidious than walls, and more stifling. He could not control the shudders of his muscles.
Crawling threatened to exhaust him; but after some distance, the tunnel ended. Sunder had found an area where the bracken was only waist-high, shaded by a crowded young copse of wattle. He was stamping down the brush to make a clearing when Covenant and then Linden caught up with him.
“We are fortunate,” Sunder murmured, nodding toward one of the nearest trees. It was a new mimosa nearly fifteen feet tall; but it would not grow any more; it was being strangled by a heavy creeper as thick as Covenant's thigh. This plant had a glossy green skin, and it bore a cluster of yellow-green fruit which vaguely resembled papaya. “It is mirkfruit.”
Mirkfruit? Covenant wondered, remembering the narcoleptic pulp with which he and Linden had been captured by Mithil Stonedown. “How is that fortunate?”
Sunder took out his knife. “The fruit is one matter, the vine another.” Drawing Covenant with him, he stepped toward the creeper, gripped his poniard in both hands. “Stand ready,” he warned. Then he leaped upward and spiked his blade into the plant above the level of his head.
The knife cut the vine like flesh. When Sunder snatched back his blade, clear water gushed from the wound.
In his surprise, Covenant hesitated.
“Drink!” snapped Sunder. Brusquely, he thrust Covenant under the spout.
Then Covenant was gulping at water that splashed into his face and mouth. It was as fresh as night air.
When he had satisfied his body's taut thirst, Linden took his place, drank as if she were frantic for something, anything, which did not exacerbate the soreness of her nerves. Covenant feared the vine would run dry. But after she stepped aside, Sunder was able to drink his fill before the stream began to slacken.
While the water lasted, the companions used it to wash their hands and faces, sluice some of the dust from then-clothes. Then the Graveller shouldered his sack. “We must continue. Nothing motionless is free of hazard under this sun.” To demonstrate his point, he kicked his feet, showed how the grass tried to wind around his ankles. “And the Rider will be abroad. We will journey as near the Mithil as soil and sun allow.”
He gestured northward. In that direction, beyond the shade of the copse, lay a broad swath of raw grey grass, chest-high and growing. But then the grass faded into a stand of trees, an incongruous aggregation of oak and sycamore, eucalyptus and jacaranda. “There is great diversity in the soil,” Sunder explained, “and the soil grows what is proper to it. I cannot foresee what we will encounter. But we will strive to stay among trees and shade.” Scanning the area as if he expected to see signs of the Rider, he began to breast his way through the thick grass.
Covenant followed unsteadily, with Linden at his back.
By the time they neared the trees, his arms were latticed with fine scratches from the rough blades; and the grass itself waved above his head.
But later, as Sunder had predicted, the shade of the trees held the undergrowth to more natural proportions. And these trees led to a woodland even more heavily shadowed by cypress, flowering mulberry, and a maple-like tree with yellow leaves which Covenant recognized poignantly as Gilden. The sight of these stately trees, which the people of the Land had once treasured so highly, now being grown like puppets by the Sunbane, made ire pound like vertigo in the bones of his forehead.
He turned to share his outrage with Linden. But she was consumed by her own needs, and did not notice him. Her gaze was haunted by misery; her eyes seemed to wince away from everything around her, as if she could not blind herself to the screaming of the trees. Neither she nor Covenant had any choice but to keep moving.
Shortly after noon, Sunder halted in a bower under a dense willow. There the companions ate a meal of ussusimiel. Then, half a league farther on, they came across another mirkfruit creeper. These things sustained Covenant against his convalescent weakness. Nevertheless, he reached the end of his stamina by mid-afternoon. Finally, he dropped to the ground, allowed himself to lie still. All his muscles felt like mud; his head wore a vice of fatigue that constricted his sight and balance. “That's enough,” he mumbled. “I've got to rest.”
“You cannot,” the Graveller said. He sounded distant. “Not until the sun's setting-or until we have found barren ground.”
“He has to,” panted Linden. “He hasn't got his strength back. He still has that poison in him. He could relapse.”
After a moment, Sunder muttered, “Very well. Remain with him-ward him. I will search for a place of safety.” Covenant heard the Graveller stalking away through the brush.
Impelled by Sunder's warning, Covenant crawled to the shade of a broad Gilden trunk, seated himself against the bark. For a short time, he closed his eyes, floated away along the wide rolling of his weariness.
Linden brought him back to himself. She must have been tired, but she could not rest. She paced back and forth in front of him, gripping her elbows with her hands, shaking her head as if she were arguing bitterly with herself. He watched for a moment, tried to squeeze the fatigue from his sight. Then he said carefully, “Tell me what's the matter.”
“That's the worst.” His request triggered words out of her; but she replied to herself rather than to him. “It's all terrible, but that's the worst. What kind of tree is that?” She indicated the trunk against which he sat.
“It's called a Gilden.” Spurred by memories, he added, “The wood used to be considered very special.”
“It's the worst.” Her pacing tightened. “Everything's hurt. In such pain-” Tremors began to scale upward in her voice. “But that's the worst. All the Gilden. They're on fire inside. Like an auto-da-fe.” Her hands sprang to cover the distress on her face. “They ought to be put out of their misery.”
Put out of-? The thought frightened him. Like Sunder's mother? “Linden,” he said warily, “tell me what's the matter.”
She spun on him in sudden rage. “Are you deaf as well as blind? Can't you feel anything? I said they're in pain! They ought to be put out of their misery!”<
br />
“No.” He faced her fury without blinking. That's what Kevin did. The Land's need broke his heart. So he invoked the Ritual of Desecration, trying to extirpate evil by destroying what he loved. Covenant winced to remember how close he had come to walking that path himself. “You can't fight Lord Foul that way. That's just what he wants.”
“Don't tell me that!” she spat at him. “I don't want to hear it. You're a leper. Why should you care about pain? Let the whole world scream! It won't make any difference to you.” Abruptly, she flung herself to the ground, sat against a tree with her knees raised to her chest. “I can't take any more.” Suppressed weeping knurled her face. She bowed her head, sat with her arms outstretched and rigid across her knees. Her hands curled into fists, clinging futilely to thin air. “I can't.”
The sight of her wrung his heart. “Please,” he breathed. “Tell me why this hurts you so much.”
“I can't shut it out.” Hands, arms, shoulders-every part of her was clenched into a rictus of damned and demanding passion. “It's all happening to me. I can see-feel- the trees. In me. It's too-personal. I can't take it. It's killing me.”
Covenant wanted to touch her, but did not dare. She was too vulnerable. Perhaps she would be able to feel leprosy in the contact of his fingers. For a moment, he grappled with a desire to tell her about Kevin. But she might hear that story as a denial of her pain. Yet he had to offer her something.
“Linden,” he said, groaning inwardly at the arduousness of what he meant to say, 'when he summoned us here, Foul spoke to me. You didn't hear him. I'm going to tell you what he said. '
Her hands writhed; but she made no other reply. After a difficult moment, he began to repeat the Despiser's cold scorn.
Ah, you are stubborn yet.
He remembered every word of it, every drop of venom, every infliction of contempt. The memory came upon him like a geas, overwhelming his revulsion, numbing his heart. Yet he did not try to stop. He wanted her to hear it all. Since he could not ease her, he tried to share his sense of purpose.
You will be the instrument of my victory.
As the words fell on her, she coiled into herself-curled her arms around her knees, buried her face against them-shrank from what he was saying like a child in terror.
There is despair laid up for you here beyond anything your petty mortal heart can bear.
Yet throughout his recitation he felt that she hardly heard him, that her reaction was private, an implication of things he did not know about her. He half expected her to break out in keening. She seemed so bereft of the simple instinct for solace. She could have sustained herself with anger at the Despiser, as he did; but such an outlet seemed to have no bearing on her complex anguish. She sat folded trembling into herself, and made no sound.
Finally, he could no longer endure watching her. He crawled forward as if he were damning himself, and sat beside her. Firmly, he pried her right hand loose from its clinch, placed his halfhand in her grip so that she could not let go of his maimed humanity unless she released her hold on herself. “Lepers aren't numb,” he said softly. “Only the body gets numb. The rest compensates. I want to help you, and I don't know how.” Through the words, he breathed, Don't hurt yourself like this.
Somehow, the touch of his hand, or the empathy in his voice, reached her. As if by a supreme act of will, she began to relax her muscles, undo the knots of her distress. She drew a shuddering breath, let her shoulders sag. But still she clung to his hand, held the place of his lost fingers as if that amputation were the only part of him she could understand.
“I don't believe in evil.” Her voice seemed to scrape through her throat, come out smeared with blood. “People aren't like that. This place is sick. Lord Foul is just something you made up. If you can blame sickness on somebody, instead of accepting it for what it is, then you can avoid being responsible for it. You don't have to try to end the pain.” Her words were an accusation; but her grip on his hand contradicted it. “Even if this is a dream.”
Covenant could not answer. If she refused to admit the existence of her own inner Despiser, how could he persuade her? And how could he try to defend her against Lord Foul's manipulations? When she abruptly disengaged her hand, rose to her feet as if to escape the implications of his grasp, he gazed after her with an ache of loneliness indistinguishable from fear in his heart.
Nine: River-ride
A SHORT time later, Sunder returned. If he noticed Linden's tension as she stood there pale and absolute with her back to Covenant, he did not ask for any explanation. Quietly, he announced that he had found a place where they could rest safely until the next morning. Then he offered Covenant his hand.
Covenant accepted the help, let himself be pulled to his feet. His muscles felt like ashes in his limbs; but by leaning on Sunder's shoulder he was able to travel another half a league to reach a stretch of rock. It was hidden among high brush, which provided at least some protection against discovery. Reclining on the rough stone, Covenant went to sleep for the remainder of the afternoon. After a supper of ussusimiel, he surprised himself by sleeping throughout the night.
In spite of the hardness of his bed, he did not awaken until shortly after sunrise. By that time, Sunder had already cleared a patch of ground and planted a new crop of melons.
When Covenant arose, Linden joined him. Avoiding his gaze as if she could not tolerate the sight of his thoughts, his concern for her, his countervailing beliefs, she examined him mutely, then pronounced him free of fever, fit to travel. Something she saw disturbed her, but she did not say what it was, and he did not ask.
As soon as Sunder's new crop was ripe, he replenished his stock of seeds and refilled his sack of melons. Then he led Covenant and Linden away into the brush.
The Mithil River had turned toward the northwest, and they continued to follow its course as closely as the terrain permitted. Initially, their progress was slow; their way traversed a tangle of ground-ivy which threatened to baffle even the Graveller's strength. But beyond the ivy they entered a deep forest of banyan trees, and walking became easier.
The second day of the fertile sun raised the banyans to heights far beyond anything Covenant would have believed possible. Huge avenues and galleries lay between the trunks; the prodigious intergrown branches arched and stretched like the high groined ceiling and towering pillars of a place of reverence in Revelstone-or like the grand cavern of Earthroot under Melenkurion Skyweir. But the effect was ominous rather than grand. Every bough and trunk seemed to be suffering under its own weight.
Several times, Covenant thought he heard a rumble of hooves in the distance, though he saw nothing.
The next day, the companions met some of the consequences of the sun's necrotic fecundity. By mid-morning, they found themselves struggling through an area which, just the day before, had been a stand of cedars many hundreds of feet tall. But now it looked like the scene of a holocaust.
Sometime during the night, the trees had started to topple; and each falling colossus had chopped down others. Now the entire region was a chaos of broken timber-trunks and branches titanically rent, splintered, crushed. The three companions spent the whole day wrestling with the ruins.
Near sunset, they won through to a low hillside of heather, seething in the breeze and twice their height. Sunder attacked the wrist-thick stems with his poniard, and eventually succeeded in clearing an area large enough for them to lie down. But even then he could not rest; he was taut with anxiety. While they ate, Covenant made no comment; and Linden, wrapped in her privacy, seemed unaware of the Graveller. But later Covenant asked him what troubled him.
Grimly, Sunder replied, “I have found no stone. The moon wanes, and will not penetrate this heather sufficiently to aid my search. I know not how to avoid Marid's fate.”
Covenant considered for a moment, then said, I’ll carry you. If I'm protected, you ought to be safe, too."
The Graveller acceded with a stiff shrug. But still he did not relax. Covenant'
s suggestion violated a lifetime of ingrained caution. Quietly, Covenant said, “I think you'll be all right. I was right about the aliantha, wasn't I?”
Sunder responded by settling himself for sleep. But when Covenant awakened briefly during the night and looked about him, he saw the Graveller staring up into the darkness of the heather like a man bidding farewell to the use of his eyes.
The companions rose in the early grey of dawn. Together, they moved through the heather until they found a thinning through which they could glimpse the eastern horizon. The breeze had become stronger and cooler since the previous evening. Covenant felt a low chill of apprehension. Perhaps he and Linden had not been protected by their footwear; perhaps they were naturally immune to the Sunbane. In that case-
They had no time to search for alternatives. Sunrise was imminent. Linden took the sack of melons. Covenant stooped to let Sunder mount his back. Then they faced the east. Covenant had to compel himself not to hold his breath.
The sun came up flaring azure, blue-clad in an aura of sapphire.
It shone for only a moment. Then black clouds began to roll westward like the vanguard of an attack.
“The sun of rain.” With an effort, Sunder ungnarled his fingers from Covenant's shoulders and dropped to the ground. “Now,” he rasped against the constriction of his chest, “we will at last begin to travel with some swiftness. If we do not foil pursuit altogether, we will at least prolong our lives.”
At once, he turned toward the River, started plunging hurriedly through the heather as if he were racing the clouds.
Covenant faced Linden across the rising wind. “Is he all right?”
“Yes,” she replied impatiently. “Our shoes block the Sunbane.” When he nodded his relief, she hastened after Sunder.
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