His anger determined him. He checked through the front wall to be sure the two guards were still there. Then he carefully selected a place in the centre of the door where the wood looked weak, measured his distance from it, and kicked.
The house trembled. The wood let out a dull splitting noise.
The guards sprang around, faced the door.
Covenant kicked the spot again. Three old branches snapped, leaving a hole the size of his hand.
“Ware, prisoner!” shouted a guard. “You will be clubbed!”
Covenant answered with another kick. Splinters showed along one of the inner supports.
The guards hesitated, clearly reluctant to attempt opening the door while it was under assault.
Throwing his weight into the blow, Covenant hit again.
One guard poised himself at the foot of the ladder. The other sprinted toward the Graveller's dwelling.
Covenant grinned fiercely. He went on kicking at the door, but did not tire himself by expending much effort. When the Graveller arrived, he gave the wood one last blow and stopped.
At a command from the Graveller, a guard ascended the ladder. Watching Covenant warily through the hole, he untied the lashings, then sprang away to evade the door if Covenant kicked it again.
Covenant did not. He pushed the door aside with his hand and stood framed in the entryway to confront the Graveller. Before she could address him, he snapped, “I want to talk to you.”
She drew herself up haughtily. “Prisoner, I do not wish to speak with you.”
He overrode her. “I don't give a good goddamn what you wish. If you think I don't have power, you're sadly mistaken. Why else does the Clave want me dead?” Bluffing grimly, he rasped, “Ask your men what happened when they attacked my companion.”
The narrowing of her eyes revealed that she had already been apprised of Vain's apparent invulnerability.
“I'll make a deal with you,” he went on, denying her time to think. “I'm not afraid of you. But I don't want to hurt you. I can wait until you decide to release me yourself. If you'll answer some questions, I'll stop breaking this house down.”
Her eyes wandered momentarily, returned to his face. “You have no power.”
“Then what are you afraid of?”
She hesitated. He could see that she wanted to turn away; but his anger undermined her confidence. Apparently, her confidence had already taken heavy punishment from some other source. After a moment, she murmured thickly, “Ask.”
At once, he said, “You took three prisoners-a woman named Linden Avery and two Stonedownors. Where are they?”
The Graveller did not meet his gaze. Somehow, his question touched the cause of her distress. “They are gone.”
“Gone?” A lurch of dread staggered his heart. “What do you mean?” She did not reply. “Did you kill them?”
“No!” Her look was one of outraged hunger, the look of a predator robbed of its prey. "It was our right! The Stonedownors were enemies! Their blood was forfeit by right of capture. They possessed Sunstone and Iianar, also forfeit. And the blood of their companion was forfeit as well. The friend of enemies is also an enemy. It was our right.
“But we were reft of our right,” A corrupt whine wounded her voice. “The three fell to us in the first day of the fertile sun. And that same night came Santonin na-Mhoram-in on his Courser.” Her malignant grief was louder than shouting. "In the name of the
Clave, we were riven of that which was ours. Your companions are nothing, Halfhand. I acceded them to the Rider without compunction. They are gone to Revelstone, and I pray that their blood may rot within them."
Revelstone? Covenant groaned. Hellfire! The strength drained from his knees; he had to hold himself up on the doorframe.
But the Graveller was entranced by her own suffering, and did not notice him. “Yes, and rot the Clave as well,” she screamed. “The Clave and all who serve the na-Mhoram. For by Santonin we were riven also of the power to live. The Stonemight-!” Her teeth gnashed. “When I discover who betrayed our possession of the Stonemight to Santonin na-Mhoram-in, I will rend the beating heart from that body and crush it in my hands!”
Abruptly, she thrust her gaze, as violent as a lance, at Covenant. “I pray your white ring is such a periapt as the Riders say. That will be our recompense. With your ring, I will bargain for the return of the Stonemight. Yes, and more as well. Therefore make ready to die, Halfhand. In the dawn I will spill your life. It will give me joy.”
Fear and loss whirled through Covenant, deafening him to the Graveller's threat, choking his protests in his throat. He could grasp nothing clearly except the peril of his friends. Because he had insisted on going into Andelain-
The Graveller turned on her heel, strode away: he had to struggle to gasp after her, “When did they go?”
She did not reply. But one of the guards said warily, “At the rising of the second fertile sun.”
Damnation! Almost two days —! On a Courser! As the guards shoved him back into the hovel and retied the door, Covenant was thinking stupidly, I'll never catch up with them.
A sea of helplessness broke over him. He was imprisoned here while every degree of the sun, every heartbeat of time, carried his companions closer to death. Sunder had said that the Earth was a prison for a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells, but that was not true: it was a jail for him alone, Thomas Covenant the Incapable. If Stonemight Woodhelven had released him at this moment, he would not have been able to save his friends.
And the Woodhelven would not release him; that thought penetrated his dismay slowly. They intended to kill him. At dawn. To make use of his blood. He unclenched his fists, raised his head.
Looking through the walls, he saw that the canyon had already fallen into shadow. Sunset was near; evening approached like a leper's fate. Mad anguish urged him to hurl himself against the weakened door; but the futility of that action restrained him. In his fever for escape, for the power to redeem what he had done to his companions, he turned to his wedding band.
Huddling there against the wall in the gathering dusk, he considered everything he knew about wild magic, remembered everything that had ever given rise to white fire. But he found no hope. He had told Linden the truth: in all his past experience, every exertion of wild magic had been triggered by the proximity of some other power. His final confrontation with Lord Foul would have ended in failure and Desecration if the Despiser's own weapon, the Illearth Stone, had not been so mighty, had not raised such a potent response from the white gold.
Yet Linden had told him that in his delirium at Crystal Stonedown his ring had emitted light even before the Rider had put forth power. He clung to that idea. High Lord Mhoram had once said to him, You are the white gold. Perhaps the need for a trigger arose in him, in his own unresolved reluctance, rather than in the wild magic itself. If that were true-Covenant settled into a more comfortable position and composed his turmoil with an effort of will. Deliberately, he began to search his memory, his passions, his need, for the key which had unlocked wild magic in his battle with Lord Foul.
He remembered the completeness of his abjection, the extremity of his peril. He remembered vividly the cruelty with which the Despiser had wracked him, striving to compel the surrender of his ring. He remembered the glee with which Lord Foul had envisioned the Land as a cesspit of leprosy.
And he remembered the awakening of his rage for lepers, for victims and destitution. That passion-clear and pure beyond any fury he had ever felt-had carried him into the eye of the paradox, the place of power between conflicting impossibilities: impossible to believe the Land real; impossible to refuse the Land's need. Anchored by the contradiction itself, made strong by rage, he had faced Lord Foul, and had prevailed.
He remembered it all, re-experienced it with an intensity that wrung his heart. And from his intensity he fashioned a command for the wild magic-a command of fire.
The ring remained inert on the second finger of his half-hand. It was barely v
isible in the dimness.
Despair twisted his guts; but he repressed it, clenched his purpose in both hands like a strangles Trigger, he panted. Proximity. Bearing memory like an intaglio of flame in his mind, he rose to his feet and confronted the only external source of power available to him. Swinging his half-fist through a tight arc, he struck Vain in the stomach.
Pain shot through his hand; red bursts like exploding carbuncles staggered across his mind. But nothing happened. Vain did not even look at him. If the Demondim-spawn contained power, he held it at a depth Covenant could not reach.
“God damn it!” Covenant spat, clutching his damaged hand and shaking with useless ire. “Don't you understand? They're going to kill me!”
Vain did not move. His black features had already disappeared in the darkness.
“Damnation.” With an effort that made him want to weep, Covenant fought down his pointless urge to smash his hands against Vain. “Those ur-viles probably lied to Foamfollower. You're probably just going to stand there and watch them cut my throat.”
But sarcasm could not save him. His companions were in such peril because he had left them defenceless. And Foamfollower had been killed in the cataclysm of Covenant's struggle with the Illearth Stone. Foamfollower, who had done more to heal the Despiser's ill than any wild magic-killed because Covenant was too frail and extreme to find any other answer. He sank to the floor like a ruin overgrown with old guilt, and sat there dumbly repeating his last hope until exhaustion dragged him into slumber.
Twice he awakened, pulse hammering, heart aflame, from dreams of Linden wailing for him. After the second, he gave up sleep; he did not believe he could bear that nightmare a third time. Pacing around Vain, he kept vigil among his inadequacies until dawn.
Gradually, the eastern sky began to etiolate. The canyon walls detached themselves from the night, and were left behind like deposits of darkness. Covenant heard people moving outside the hut, and braced himself.
Feet came up the ladder; hands fumbled at the lashings.
When the vine dropped free, tie slammed his shoulder against the door, knocking the guard off the ladder. At once, he sprang to the ground, tried to flee.
But he had misjudged the height of the stilts. He landed awkwardly, plunged headlong into a knot of men beyond the foot of the ladder. Something struck the back of his head, triggering vertigo. He lost control of his limbs.
The men yanked him to his feet by the arms and hair. “You are fortunate the Graveller desires you wakeful,” one of them said. “Else I would teach your skull the hardness of my club.” Dizziness numbed Covenant's legs; the canyon seemed to suffer from nystagmus. The Woodhelvennin hauled him away like a collection of disarticulated bones.
They took him toward the north end of the canyon. Perhaps fifty or sixty paces beyond the last house, they stopped.
A vertical crack split the stone under his feet. Wedged into it was a heavy wooden post, nearly twice his height.
He groaned sickly and tried to resist. But he was helpless.
The men turned him so that he faced the village, then bound his arms behind the post. He made a feeble effort to kick at them; they promptly lashed his ankles as well.
When they were done, they left without a word.
As the vertigo faded, and his muscles began to recover, he gagged on nausea; but his guts were too empty to release anything.
The houses were virtually invisible, lost in the gloaming of the canyon. But after a moment he realized that the post had been placed with great care. A deep gap marked the eastern wall above him; and through it came a slash of dawn. He would be the first thing in Stonemight Woodhelven to receive the sun.
Moments passed. Sunlight descended like the blade of an axe toward his head.
Though he was protected by his boots, dread ached in his bones. His pulse seemed to beat behind his eyeballs.
The light touched his hair, his forehead, his face. While the Woodhelven lay in twilight, he experienced the sunrise like an annunciation. The sun wore a corona of light brown haze. A breath of arid heat blew across him.
Damnation, he muttered. Bloody damnation.
As the glare covered his mien, blinding him to the Woodhelven, a rain of sharp pebbles began to fall on him. Scores of people threw small stones at him.
He squeezed his eyes shut, bore the pain as best he could.
When the pebbles stopped, he looked up again and saw the Graveller approaching out of the darkness.
She held a long, iron knife, single-edged and hiltless. The black metal appeared baleful in her grasp. Her visage had not lost its misery; but it also wore a corrupt exaltation which he could not distinguish from madness.
Twenty paces or more behind the Graveller stood Vain, The Woodhelvennin had wrapped him in heavy vines, trying to restrain him; but he seemed unaware of his bonds. He held himself beyond reach as if he had come simply to watch Covenant die.
But Covenant had no time to think about Vain. The Graveller demanded his attention. “Now,” she rasped. “Recompense. I will shed your life, and your blood will raise water for the Woodhelven.” She glanced down at the narrow crevice, “And with your white ring we will buy back our Stonemight from the Clave.”
Clutching his dismally-rehearsed hope, Covenant asked, “Where's your orcrest?”
“Orcrest?” she returned suspiciously.
“Your Sunstone.”
“Ah,” she breathed, “Sunstone. The Rede speaks of such matters.” Bitterness twisted her face. “Sunstone is permitted-yet we were reft of our Stonemight. It is not just!” She eyed Covenant as if she were anticipating the taste of his blood. “I have no Sunstone, Halfhand.”
No Sunstone? Covenant gasped inwardly. He had hoped with that to ignite his ring. But the Graveller had no Sunstone. No Sunstone. The desert sun shone on him like the bright, hot flood which had borne him into the Land. Invisible vulture-wings beat about his head-heart strokes of insanity. He could barely thrust his voice through the noise. “How can-? I thought every Graveller needed a Sunstone.” He knew this was not true, but he wanted to make her talk, delay her. He had already been stabbed once: any similar blow would surely end him. “How else can you work the Sunbane?”
“It is arduous,” she admitted, though the hunger in her gaze did not blink. “I must make use of the Rede. The Rede!” Abruptly, she spat into the crack at her feet. “For generations Stonemight Woodhelven has had no need of such knowledge. From Graveller to Graveller the Stonemight has been handed down, and with it we made life! Without it, we must grope for survival as we may.”
The sun sent sweat trickling through Covenant's beard, down the middle of his back. His bonds cut off the circulation in his arms, tugged pain into his shoulders. He had to swallow several times to clear his throat. “What is it? The Stonemight?”
His question reached her. He saw at once that she could not refuse to talk about the Stonemight. A nausea of love or lust came into her face. She lowered her knife; her eyes lost their focus on him. “Stonemight,” she breathed ardently. “Ah, the Stonemight.” Her breasts tightened under her green robe as if she were remembering rapture. “It is power and glory, wealth and comfort. A stone of dearest emerald, alight with possibility and cold beyond the touch of any stone. That such might is contained in so small and lovely a periapt! For the Stonemight is no larger than my palm. It is flat, and sharp of edge, like a flake stricken from a larger stone. And it is admirable beyond price.”
She went on, unable to rein the rush of her entrancement. But Covenant lost her words in a flash of intuitive horror. Suddenly he was certain that the talisman she described was a fragment of the Illearth Stone.
That conviction blazed through him like appalled lightning. It explained so many things: the ruined condition of this region; the easiness of the Woodhelven's life; the gratuitous violence of the people; the Graveller's obsession. For the Illearth Stone was the very essence of corruption, a bane so malignant that he had been willing to sacrifice Foamfollower's
life as well as his own in order to extirpate that evil from the Land. For a moment of dismay, he believed he had failed to destroy the Stone, that the Illearth Stone itself was the source of the Sunbane.
But then another explanation occurred to him. At one time, the Despiser had given each of his Ravers a piece of the Stone. One of these Ravers had marched to do battle against the Lords, and had been met here, at the southwest corner of Andelain-met and held for several days. Perhaps in that conflict a flake of the Raver's Stone had fallen undetected among the hills, and had remained there, exerting its spontaneous desecration, until some unhappy Woodhelvennin had stumbled across it.
But that did not matter now. A Rider had taken the Stonemight. To Revelstone. Suddenly, Covenant knew that he had to live, had to reach Revelstone. To complete the destruction of the Illearth Stone. So that his past pain and Foamfollower's death would not have been for nothing.
The Graveller was sobbing avidly, “May they rot!” She clenched the haft of her knife like a spike. “Be damned to interminable torment for bereaving me! I curse them from the depths of my heart and the abyss of my anguish!” She jerked the knife above her head. The blade glinted keen and evil in the desert sun. She had lost all awareness of Covenant; her gaze was bent inward on a savage vision of the Clave. “I will slay you all!”
Covenant's shout tore his throat. In horror and desperation, he yelled, “Nekhrimah, Vain! Save me.”
The Graveller paid no heed. With the whole force of her body, she drove her knife at his chest.
But Vain moved. While the blade arced through its swing, he shrugged his arms free of the bindings.
He was too far away, too late-
From a distance of twenty paces, he closed his fist.
Her arms froze in mid-plunge. The knife tip strained at the centre of Covenant's shirt; but she could not complete the blow.
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