The Wounded Land t2cotc-1

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  But the knoll was too large; five Haruchai could not defend it completely. Gradually, they were driven backward.

  Covenant did not hesitate. Cold fury filled his bones like power. Snarling at himself, he pulled the bundle from under his belt and unwrapped the krill of Loric Vilesilencer.

  The brightness of its gem stopped him momentarily; he had forgotten the intensity of that white, pure light, the keenness of the edges, the heat of the metal. A leper's fear made him reluctant to touch the krill without the protection of cloth.

  But then the company's need came over him like a geas. His fingers were already numb, irrelevant. No burn could alter the doom which defined him. He dropped the cloth., took the krill in his half-hand, and went to join the Haruchai.

  Beings like misborn Cavewights came jerking upward on their long limbs. Then: claws scored the stone; their jaws gaped and clacked. One gouge could disembowel him; one bite could sever an arm. Their feelers reached toward him.

  Moving as if he were accursed, he began to slash at them.

  The krill sliced their plating like bare flesh, cut through antennae, even mandibles, as if the blade were a broadsword with the weight and puissance of a Giant behind it. The krill was a tool of Law, and the creatures were the Lawless spawn of the Sunbane. A dull ache of fire spread up through Covenant's palm to his wrist, his arm; but he hacked and flailed urgently, and his every stroke sent a beast to the ungentle death of the mass below it.

  Soon Sunder joined the defence. His poniard was not a good weapon for such work; but he was sturdy, and his blade could cripple feelers. He was unable to dislodge the beasts as the Haruchai did. But often that was unnecessary. With damaged antennae, the creatures became disoriented, turned aside, grappled with each other, toppled to the ground. And Stell or Ceer warded him.

  The attack did not falter; hundreds of creatures replaced the scores which fell. But the company held. In time, all the ground around the knoll was denuded of grass; and a storm of mute rage covered the bare dirt, seeking to strike upward. But only a certain number of beasts could assail the boulders at any one moment. Against these limited numbers, the company held. Their ordeal dragged out like slow torture. Covenant's arms became leaden; he had to grip the krill in both hands. Sunder kept up a mutter of curses, lashing himself to continue the struggle long after he had exhausted his strength. But Hollian gave him periods of rest by taking his place, using his poniard because her dirk was too small for the task. And Vain's power helped, though he seemed unaware of what he did. The company held.

  The afternoon wore on. Covenant became little more than a blank reflex. He grew numb to the passage of time, the progress of the assault. His joints were cramped with fire. Time and again, Brinn saved him from attacks he was too slow to meet.

  He hardly noticed when the sun started to set, and the frenzy of the creatures began to abate. At the onset of twilight, the beasts seemed to lose purpose or direction. By ones and twos, then by scores, they scuttled away, wandering hurriedly into the grass. As dusk thickened over the savannah, the goad of the Sunbane faded. Soon all the creatures were fleeing.

  Covenant stopped. His heart trembled like prostration in his chest. He was gasping for breath. He dropped the krill among the rocks. The knoll tilted under him. On his hands and knees, he tried to crawl up to Linden. But he could not reach her. His dizziness became suddenly violent. It whirled him out into the blind night.

  Sometime after the moon had passed its apex, he was awakened by Linden's knotted retching as she went into convulsions.

  He lurched upright and groped through a blur of fatigue, hunger, thirst, to try to see what was happening.

  The crown of the boulders was lit by the krill; it had been wedged among the stones so that it shed illumination over the company. Sunder and Hollian crouched beside Linden, watching her anxiously. Ceer and Hergrom restrained her so that she would not hurt herself, as long, mad clenchings shook her muscles.

  On the lower boulders, the other Haruchai clustered as if they were fighting each other. With a quick glance, Covenant saw Brinn, Stell, and Harn struggling to quell Cail. Like Linden, the injured Haruchai lay in the grip of frenetic seizures.

  Seeing Covenant, Sunder rasped grimly, “The sun of pestilence has infected her wound. From this sickness none recover.”

  Oh, God.

  A rush of panic started up in him, then shattered as he realized that Linden was gagging, choking on her tongue.

  He grabbed for her face and tried to pry her jaws open. But he could not break the locking of her teeth. Her whole body sprang rigid.

  “She's swallowed her tongue! Get her mouth open!”

  Instantly, Ceer clinched both her wrists in his left hand. With his right, he tried to wedge open her jaws. For one heartbeat, even his strength was not enough. Then he succeeded in forcing her teeth apart. She quivered under a lash of pain. Holding her mouth open with the width of his hand, he reached deftly down her throat, cleared her tongue.

  She drew breath as if she wanted to scream; but convulsions blocked the wail in her chest.

  With a feral spasm, Cail hurled Brinn from him. Twisting in the air, Brinn landed lightly on the ground, came bounding upward again as Stell and Harn grappled with their kinsman.

  Linden's face was ghastly in the sunlight. Her breathing wept in and out of her excruciated lungs.

  Cail sounded as if he were asphyxiating. An obscure part of Covenant thought, He's immune to the Sunbane. There must have been poison in the spur.

  He concentrated on Linden as if he could keep her alive by sheer force of will. His hand shook as he stroked her forehead, wiped the sweat away; but he could feel nothing.

  “Ur-Lord,” Hollian said in a stretched whisper, “I must speak of this. It must be uttered.” He could not read her countenance; her face was averted from the krill Out of the shadow, she breathed, “I have consulted the Iianar. The morrow will bring a desert sun.”

  Covenant clung to Linden's torment, willing it to ease. “I don't give a damn.”

  “There is more.” Hollian's tone sharpened. She was an eh-Brand, accustomed to respect. “There will be fire, as if the sun were a sun of flame. This will become a place of ill. We must flee.”

  “Now?”

  “At once. We must return to the west-to the soil where trees grow. The earth of this grassland will be death to us.”

  “She's in no condition!” His sudden fury shocked the night, struck the company into a silence punctuated only by the hoarse breathing of the injured. With a wrench of his shoulders, he dismissed Hollian's warning. “I'm not going to move her.”

  She started to protest. Sunder interrupted her gruffly. “He is the ur-Lord.”

  “He is wrong. The truth must be met. These deaths cannot be prevented. To remain here will be death for us all.”

  “He is the ur-Lord.” Sunder's roughness grew gentle. “Every task to which he sets his hand is impossible-yet it is accomplished. Have courage, eh-Brand.”

  Linden broke into another series of spasms. Watching the way her illness brutalized her, Covenant feared that every breath would be her last. But then, abruptly, her convulsions ended; she fell limp as if the puppet strings of her plight had been cut. Slowly, her respiration deepened as she sank into the sleep of exhaustion.

  Cail's affliction was more advanced. The fits which wracked him went on until moonset. Brinn's people had to fight incessantly to prevent him from battering himself to death on the rocks.

  “Dawn is near,” Sunder murmured softly, as if he feared to disturb the stillness, feared that the sound of his voice might trigger Linden or Cail into frenzy again.

  “We are too late.” Hollian could not suppress her bitterness. “We must remain here. We cannot gain safety in time.”

  Covenant ignored both of them. He sat with Linden in his embrace and sought to believe that she would live.

  No one moved. They sat in the krill-light while the east paled toward sunrise. A dusty glow began to silhouette the ea
rth. All the stars were washed away. The sky modulated as brown gathered around the imminence of the dawn. The atmosphere grew palpably drier, foretelling heat.

  When the sun rose, it wore a cloak of desiccation. Its touch reminded Covenant that he had not had food or fluid since the previous morning. A giddy dispassion began to revolve in him, distancing him from his fate. Linden's flagrant slumber felt like an accomplished fact in his arms.

  As the Sunbane collared the savannah, the pampas grass began to melt. Its fiber turned to a dead grey sludge, and slumped to the ground like spilth. This, Covenant mused in a mood of canted detachment, was what had happened to Morinmoss. To Grimmerdhore and Garroting Deep. A desert sun had risen over them, and tens of thousands of years of sentient forest had simply dissolved into muck. And the glory of the world becomes less than it was. For a moment, he recovered enough passion to ache out, Damn you, Foul! It would be better if you just killed me.

  In a voice like Covenant's inanition, but infinitely steadier, Brinn addressed Hollian. “Eh-Brand, you spoke of fire.”

  “The Iianar spoke of fire.” Both affronted dignity and nagging self-doubt marked her words. “Never have I seen such a flame in my foretelling. Do not question me. I cannot answer.”

  Covenant thought dimly that there was no reason for fire. The quest was without water under a desert sun. Nothing else was necessary.

  The truth of Hollian's augury became clear when the sun rose high enough, and the grass sank low enough, for light to contact the bare ground around the knoll. And with the light came a faint shimmer which seemed to transmogrify the texture of the soil. The dirt began to glow.

  Covenant believed that he was hallucinating.

  Without warning, Vain ascended the boulders. Everyone stared at him; but his black eyes remained unfocused, private, as if he were unaware of his own intentions.

  Brinn and Hergrom placed themselves to guard Covenant and Linden. But Vain stopped without acknowledging the Haruchai and stood gazing like a void into the blank air.

  Slowly, the soil took on a reddish tinge enriched with yellow. The colour deepened, hardened.

  Heat radiated from the ground.

  Around the edges of the clearing, the sludge started to smoulder. Viscid smoke went up in wisps, then in billows which thickened steadily, clogging the atmosphere.

  In moments, the muck was afire.

  As it burned, smoke began to mount in other places across the savannah. Soon there were blazes everywhere.

  And the bare dirt continued to darken.

  The company watched tensely; even the Haruchai seemed to be holding their breath. Only Linden and Cail were oblivious. Vain was not. He studied Linden between the shoulders of Brinn and Hergrom, and his visage sharpened, as if vague purposes were being whetted toward clarity within him.

  Numbly, Covenant studied the ground. That rich, half-orange light and heat brought up recollections. Gradually, the face of Lena's father, Trell, became vivid to him; he did not know why. He could see Trell standing like granite in Lena's home. The big Stonedownor's face was ruddy with light. Reflections gleamed in his beard-the precise colour of these emanations.

  Then Covenant remembered.

  Graveling. Fire-stones.

  Under the touch of the desert sun, this entire savannah was being transformed into a sea of graveling.

  Fire consumed the sludge; and under it lay clear graveling which sent one long, silent shout of heat into the heavens.

  Covenant and his companions might as well have been perched above a flow of lava.

  He sat and stared as if his eyeballs had been scorched blind. He could feel death lying like a familiar in his arms.

  Memla had sacrificed herself. Linden and Cail were going to die. Everyone was going to die.

  Vain gave no hint of his intent. The suddenness of his movement took even the wary Haruchai by surprise. With a frightening swiftness, he thrust Brinn and Hergrom aside and stepped between them toward Covenant and Linden.

  Hergrom caught himself on an outcropping of rock. Brinn was saved from a fall into the graveling only by the celerity with which Ceer grabbed for him.

  Effortlessly, Vain took Linden from Covenant's arms.

  Stell surged forward, pounded Vain between the eyes. The Demondim-spawn did not react; he went about his purpose as if he had not been touched. Stell was knocked back against Harn.

  Cradling Linden gently, Vain stepped to the eastern edge of the mound and leaped down into the fire-stones.

  “Vain!”

  Covenant was on his feet. His hearing roared as if the heat had become a gale. Venom pulsed in his veins. He wanted wild magic, wanted to strike-!

  But if he hit Vain, hurt him, the Demondim-spawn might drop Linden into the graveling.

  Linden!

  Vain paid no heed to the danger behind him. Firmly, surely, he strode away.

  At that instant, Hergrom sprang pantherish from the boulders. At the farthest stretch of his leap, he impacted against Vain's shoulders.

  The Demondim-spawn did not even stumble. He walked on across the graveling with Linden held before him and Hergrom clinging to his back as if he were unconscious of them both.

  Covenant's shouting died in his chest. He was hardly aware that Brinn and Sunder were holding his arms as if to prevent him from pursuing Vain.

  “He does not feel the fire,” Brinn remarked distantly. “Perhaps he will save her. Perhaps he intends to save her.”

  To save-? Covenant sagged. Was it possible? The muscles of his face hurt, but he could not unclench his grimace. To save her so that she could serve Lord Foul? “Then why”- his voice knotted — “didn't he help her before? During the Grim?”

  Brinn shrugged. “Perhaps he saw then that his aid was not needed. He acts now to save her because we are helpless.”

  Vain? Covenant panted. No. He could not suppress the tremors in him. “We're not helpless.” It was unbearable. Not even a leper could bear it. We are not helpless.

  He cast one abrupt glance toward Vain. The Demondim-spawn was running, fading into the shimmer of the graveling.

  Covenant wrenched free of Brinn and Sunder. He confronted his companions. The effort to control his trembling made him savage. “Ceer. Give me the rukh”

  Sunder scowled. Hollian's eyes widened as if she felt an intuitive hope or fear. But the Haruchai showed no surprise. Ceer took Memla's rukh from his tunic and handed it to Covenant.

  With a jerk, Covenant thrust the iron toward Sunder. “All right. You're the Graveller. Use it.”

  Sunder's lips formed words without sound: Use it?

  “Call the Coursers back. They're bred to the Sunbane. They can carry us out of here.”

  The Graveller breathed a strangled protest. “Covenant!”

  Covenant jabbed the rukh against Sunder's chest. “Do it. I can't. I don't know the Sunbane the way you do. I can't touch it. I'm a leper.”

  “And I am not a Rider!”

  “I don't care.” Covenant clinched ire around his dread. “We're all going to die. Maybe I don't count. But you do. Hollian does. You know the truth about the Clave.” Again, he punched Sunder with the rukh. “Use it.”

  The heat spread sweat across Sunder's face, made his features look like they were about to melt like the grass. Desperately, he turned an imploring gaze toward Hollian.

  She touched his scarred forearm. The stature of her calling was upon her, “Sunder,” she said quietly. “Graveller. Perhaps it may be done. Surely the Sunstone empowers you to the attempt. And I will aid you as I can. Through the Iianar, I am able to perceive the state of the Sunbane. It may be that I can guide you to mastery.”

  For a moment, they held each other's eyes, measuring what they saw. Then Sunder swung back to Covenant. The Graveller's expression was rent by fear of failure, by instinctive loathing for anything which belonged to the Clave. But he accepted the rukh.

  Grimly, he climbed to sit atop the highest boulder, near the white radiance of the krill.

&
nbsp; Hollian stood on a lower rock so that her head was level with his. She watched gravely as he set his orcrest in his lap, then fumbled to uncap the hollow handle of the rukh.

  Covenant's legs quavered as if they could no longer bear the weight of who he was. But he braced himself on the rocks, remained erect like a witness and a demand.

  Sunder poured the last fluid from the rukh into his hand. Hollian placed her palm in his, let it rest there for a moment, sharing the blood like a gesture of comradeship. Then she wrapped her stained fingers around the Iianar, and began to chant softly to herself. Sunder rubbed his hands together, dabbed red onto his forehead and cheeks, then picked up the Sunstone.

  The rigid accents of his invocation formed a counterpoint to her lilting murmur. Together, they wove the silence into a skein of Sunbane-power: bloodshed and fire.

  Soon, his familiar vermeil shaft shot like a quarrel toward the sun. A crepitation like the discharge of slow lightning made the air squirm.

  He lifted the rukh and held it so that the Sunstone's beam ran along the iron. His knuckles whitened, cording the backs of his hands.

  Delicate flames opened like buds along the Iianar. Hollian closed her eyes. Her fire turned slowly to the colour of the sun's brown aura, began to put out tendrils. One of them reached Sunder's hands. It wound around his grasp, then started to climb the rukh and the Sunstone shaft.

  He blinked fiercely at the sweat in his eyes, glared as if the rukh were an adder he could neither hold nor release.

  The poignance in Covenant's chest told him that he had forgotten to breathe. When he forced himself to inhale, he seemed to suck in vertigo from the air. Only his braced arms kept him from losing his balance.

  None of the Haruchai were watching Sunder and Hollian. Cail had gone into convulsions. The others fought to keep him still.

  Memories of Linden wrung Covenant's guts. He shut his eyes against the nausea.

  He looked up again when the chanting ended. Sunder's shaft and Hollian's flame vanished. The Stonedownors clung to each other. The Graveller's shoulders shook.

  Covenant knelt without knowing how he had lost his feet.

  When Sunder spoke, his voice was muffled against Hollian's neck. “After all, it is not greatly difficult to be a Rider. I am attuned to the rukh. The Coursers are distant. But they have heard. They will come.”