Covenant looked away, feeling like an intruder. But the Stonedownors came straight to him; and Sunder addressed him with an air of grim purpose. “Ur-Lord, this must be told. From the moment of your request”- he stressed the word ironically — "that I take up this rukh, there has been a fear in me. While Memla held her rukh, the Clave knew her. Therefore the Grim came upon us. I feared that in gaining mastery of her rukh I, too, would become known to the Clave.
“Covenant-” He faltered for only an instant. “My fear is true. We have ascertained it. I lack the skill to read the purpose of the Clave-but I have felt their touch, and know that I am exposed to them.”
“Ur-Lord,” asked Hollian quietly, “what must we do?”
“Just what we've been doing.” Covenant hardly heard her, hardly heard his answer. “Run. Fight, if we have to.” He was remembering Linden's face in convulsions, her rigid mouth, the sweat streaks in her hair. And wild magic. “Live.”
Fearing that he was about to lose control, he turned away.
Who was he, to talk to others about living and striving, when he could not even handle the frightening growth of his own power? The venom! It was part of him now. As the wild magic became more possible to him, everything else seemed more and more impossible. He was so capable of destruction. And incapable of anything else.
He picked up a jug of metheglin and drank deeply to keep himself from groaning aloud.
He was thinking, Power corrupts. Because it is unsure. It is not enough. Or it is too much. It teaches doubt. Doubt makes violence.
The pressure for power was growing in him. Parts of him were hungry for the rage of wild fire.
For a time, he was so afraid of himself, of the consequences of his own passions, that he could not eat. He drank the thick mead and stared into the flames, trying to believe that he would be able to contain himself.
He had killed twenty-one people. They were vivid to him now in the approaching dawn. Twenty-one! Men and women whose only crime had been that their lives had been deformed by a Raver.
When he raised his head, he found Linden standing near him.
She was insecure on her feet, still extremely weak; but she was able to hold herself upright. She gazed at him soberly. As he dropped his eyes, she said with an echo of her old severity, “You should eat something.”
He could not refuse her. He picked up a piece of dried meat. She nodded, then moved woodenly away to examine Cail. Covenant chewed abstractly while he watched her.
Cail appeared to be both well and ill. He seemed to have recovered from the Sunbane sickness, regained his native solidity and composure. But his injury was still hotly infected; voure had no efficacy against the poison of the Courser's spur.
Linden glared at the wound as if it wrung her nerves, then demanded fire and boiling water. Hergrom and Ceer obeyed without comment. While the water heated, she borrowed Hollian's dirk, burned it clean in the flames, then used it to lance Cail's infection. He bore the pain stoically; only a slight tension between his brows betrayed what he felt. Blood and yellow fluid splashed a stain onto the sand. Her hands were precise in spite of her weakness. She knew exactly where and how deeply to cut.
When the water was ready, she obtained a blanket from Brinn. Slashing the material into strips, she used some of them to wash out the wound; with others, she made a crude bandage. Fine beads of sweat mirrored the firelight from Cail's forehead; but he did not wince. He did not appear to be breathing.
“You'll be all right as soon as we stop the infection.” Her voice sounded impersonal, as if she were reading from some medical tome. “You're healthy enough for any five people.” Then her severity frayed. “This is going to hurt. If I could think of any way to kill the pain, I'd do it. But I can't. I left everything in my bag.”
“Have no concern, Linden Avery,” Cail replied evenly. “I am well. I will serve you.”
“Serve yourself!” she grated at once. “Take care of that arm.” As she spoke, she made sure that his bandage was secure. Then she poured boiling water over the fabric.
Cail made no sound. She stumbled to her feet, moved away from him and sat down against the gully wall, as if she could not bear the sight of his courage.
A moment later, Vain caught Covenant's attention. The first light of the sun touched Vain's head, etched it out of the gloaming-a cynosure of blackness and secrets. Sunder and Hollian went quickly to find rock. Covenant helped Linden erect. The Haruchai stood. All the company faced the dawn.
The sun broached the rim of the gully, wearing brown like the cerements of the world. Thirst and hallucination, bleached bones, fever-blisters. But Linden gasped involuntarily, “It's weaker!”
Then, before Covenant could grasp what she meant, she groaned in disappointment. “No. I must be losing my mind. It hasn't changed.”
Changed? Her bitterness left him in a whirl of anxiety as the quest broke camp, mounted the Coursers, and set off eastward. Was she so badly stressed by fear that she could no longer trust her eyes? In her convulsions, sweat had darkened her hair like streaks of damp anguish. But she seemed to be recovering. Her wound had been relatively minor. The company rode the sun-trammelled wasteland of the North Plains as if they were traversing an anvil. Why did he know so little about her?
But the next morning she was steadier, surer. She carried her head as if it had ceased to pain her. When she faced the dawn and saw the third desert sun rise, her whole body tensed. “I was right,” she gritted. “It is weaker.” A moment later, she cried, “There!” Her arm accused the horizon. “Did you see it? Right there, it changed! It was weaker and then it became as strong as ever. As if it crossed a boundary.”
No one spoke. Sunder and Hollian watched Linden as if they feared that the Sunbane sickness had affected her mind. The Haruchai gazed at her without expression.
“I saw it.” Her voice stiffened. “I'm not crazy.”
Covenant winced. “We don't have your eyes.”
She glared at him for an instant, then turned on her heel and strode away toward the waiting Coursers.
Now she rode as if she were angry. In spite of the dry brutality of the sun and the strain of clinging to Clash's back, her strength was returning. And with it came ire. Her ability to see had already cost her so much; and now her companions appeared to doubt what she saw. Covenant himself half disbelieved her. Any weakening of the Sunbane was a sign of hope. Surely therefore it was false? After what she had been through?
When the company stopped for the night, she ate a meal, tended Cail's arm, and set herself to sleep. But long before dawn, she was pacing the dead shale as if she were telling the moments until a revelation. Her tension articulated clearly how much she needed to be right, how sorely her exacerbated soul needed relief.
That morning, the sun rose in red pestilence. It tinged the stark outlines of the wilderland crimson, making the desert roseate, lovely, and strange, like a gilded burial ground; but though he strained his sight until his brain danced with images of fire, Covenant could not descry any lessening of the Sunbane. Yet Linden gave a fierce nod as if she had been vindicated. And after a moment, Brinn said impassively, “The Chosen is farsighted.” He used her title like a recognition of power. “The corruption about the sun has lessened.”
“I am surpassed,” Sunder muttered in frustration. “I do not see this lessening.”
“You will,” Linden replied. “We're getting closer.”
Covenant was suddenly dizzy with hope. “Closer to what?” Was the Sunbane failing?
“Inquire of the Chosen.” Brinn's shrug disavowed all responsibility for what he saw. “We know nothing of this.”
Covenant turned to her.
“I'll tell you.” She did not meet his gaze. “When I'm sure.”
He swallowed a curse, gritted himself still. It's too much, she had said. I'll try. He understood. She was trying. She wanted to trust what she saw and feared to be misled, to be hurt again. With difficulty, he left her alone.
She contin
ued to stare eastward while the Haruchai distributed food, water, and voure. She ate heedlessly, ignoring Brinn's people as they readied the Coursers. But then, just as Sunder brought the beasts forward, her arm stabbed out, and she barked, “There!”
Brinn glanced at the sun. “Yes. The corruption regains its strength.”
Covenant groaned to himself. No wonder she did not wish to explain what she saw. How could she bear it?
Morosely, he mounted Clash behind Linden and Brinn. The quest moved out across the ragged wasteland.
Under this sun, the desert became a place of silence and scorpions. Only the rattle of the Coursers' hooves punctuated the windless air; and soon that noise became part of the silence as well. Insects scuttled over the rocks, or waded the sand, and made no sound. The sky was as empty of life as a tomb. Slowly, Covenant's mood became red and fatal. The Plains seemed eerie with all the blood he had shed. Involuntarily, he toyed with his ring, turning it around his finger as if his bones itched for fire. Yet he loathed killing, loathed himself. And he was afraid.
We have to accept who we are. Where had he learned the arrogance or at least the insensitivity to say such things?
That night, his memories and dreams made his skin burn as if he were eager for immolation, for a chance to anneal his old guilt in flame. Lena filled his sight as if she had been chiselled on the backs of his eyes. A child, in spite of her body's new maturity. He had struck her, knotted his hands in her shift and rent-The memory of her scream was distilled nightmare to him. A moral leper.
You are mine.
He was a creature of wild magic and doubt; and the long night, like the whole Land stretched helpless under the Sunbane, was also a desert.
But the next morning, when the sun rose in its crimson infestation, he, too, could see that its aurora was weaker. It seemed pale, almost uncertain. Sunder and Hollian could see it as well.
And this time the weakness did not vanish until mid-morning. Ascending from the first quarter of the sky, the aura crossed a threshold; and the Sunbane closed over the Plains like a lid. Intuitions tried to clarify themselves in Covenant's head; he felt that he should have been able to name them. But he could not. Lacking Linden's eyes, he seemed also to lack the ability to interpret what he saw. A strange blindness -
That evening, the company reached Landsdrop.
Now Covenant knew where he was. Landsdrop was the precipice which separated the Upper Land in the west from the Lower Land in the east. It stretched roughly north-northwest from deep in the Southron Range far toward the unexplored Northron Climbs. Many leagues south of him, Mount Thunder, ancient Gravin Threndor, crouched against the cliff, kneeling with its knees on the Lower Land and its elbows on the Upper. Deep in its dark roots lay the place where the Illearth Stone had been found. And deep in its dark heart was the secret chamber of Kiril Threndor, where Lord Foul the Despiser now made his home.
The sun was setting as the quest halted. The shadow of Landsdrop, three or four thousand feet high in this region, obscured all the east. But Covenant knew what lay ahead. The deadly marsh of Sarangrave Flat.
In past ages, the Sarangrave had become what it was — a world of intricate waterways, exotic life, and cunning peril-through the effects of the river called the Denies Course. This water emerged between the knees of Mount Thunder from the catacombs in the bowels of the mountain, where it had run through Wightwarrens and Demondim breeding dens, through charnals and offal pits, laboratories and forges, until it was polluted by the most irrefragable filth. As sewage spread throughout the Flat from the river, it corrupted a once-fair region, changed a marsh home for egrets and orchids into a wild haven for the misborn. During the last wars, Lord Foul had found much of the raw material for his armies in Sarangrave Flat.
Covenant knew about the Flat because at one time he had seen it for himself, from Landsdrop to the south of Mount Thunder. He had seen with Land-sharpened eyes, vision he no longer possessed. But he had other knowledge of the region as well. He had heard some things during his visits to Revelstone. And he had learned more from Runnik of the Bloodguard. At one time, Runnik had accompanied Korik and two Lords, Hyrim and Shetra, on a mission to Seareach, to ask the aid of the Giants against Lord Foul. Lord Shetra had been slain in the Sarangrave, and Runnik had barely survived to bring back the tale.
Covenant's guts squirmed at the thought of the Sarangrave under a sun of pestilence. Beyond doubt, he was going to have to tell Runnik's tale to his companions.
The Haruchai set camp a stone's throw from the great cliff because Covenant refused to go any closer in the dark; he already felt too susceptible to the lure of precipices. After he had eaten, fortified himself with metheglin, he huddled near the jumping allusions of the campfire, wrapped his memories around him, and asked the quest to listen.
Linden sat down opposite him. He wanted to feel that she was nearby; but the intervening fire distanced her. Sunder and Hollian were vague at the edges of his sight. His attention narrowed to the crackling wood and the recollection of Runnik's tale.
Fist and faith, the Bloodguard had said. We will not fail. But they had failed. Covenant knew that now. They had failed, and fallen into Corruption, and died. The Vow had been broken. And the Giants had been slain.
But such things were not part of what he had to tell. To control the old ache of remembrance, he envisioned Runnik's face before him. The Bloodguard had stood, with a pang in his eyes, before High Lord Elena, Lord Mhoram, Hile Troy, and the Unbeliever. A bonfire had made the night poignant. Covenant could recall Runnik's exact words. The attacks of the lurker. The fall of Lord Shetra. Bloody hell.
In a dull tone, he told the essentials of that tale. When he had first seen the Sarangrave, it had been a place of fervid luxuriance and subtle death: alive with shy water-bred animals and malicious trees; adorned with pools of clear poison; waylaid with quicksand; spangled with flowers of loveliness and insanity. A place where nature had become vastly treacherous, polluted and hungry. But not evil. It was blameless in the same way that storms and predators were blameless. The Giants, who knew how to be wary, had always been able to travel the Flat.
But forty years later, when Korik's mission had looked out from Landsdrop, the Sarangrave had changed. Slumbering ill had been stirred to wakefulness. And this ill, which Runnik had called the lurker of the Sarangrave, had snatched Lord Shetra to her death, despite the fact that she had been under the protection of fifteen Bloodguard. Fifteen-The lurker had been alert to strength, attracted to power. First the Ranyhyn, then the Bloodguard themselves, had unwittingly brought peril down on Korik's mission. And of the messengers Korik had sent to carry the tale back to the High Lord, only Runnik had survived.
After Covenant fell silent, his companions remained still for a moment. Then Hollian asked unsurely, “May we not ride around this place of risk?”
Covenant did not raise his head. “That used to be a hundred leagues out of the way. I don't know what it is now.” Had Sarangrave Flat grown or dwindled under the Sunbane?
“We have not such time,” Sunder said immediately. “Do you desire to confront a second Grim? The Clave reads us as we speak of such matters. When I place my hand upon the iron, I feel the eyes of the Banefire fixed in my heart. They hold no benison.”
“The Clave can't-” Linden began, then stopped herself.
“The Clave,” Covenant responded, “kills people every day. To keep that bloody Banefire going. How many lives do you think a hundred leagues are going to cost?”
Hollian squirmed. “Mayhap this lurker no longer lives? The Sunbane alters all else. Will not Sarangrave Flat be altered also?”
“No,” Linden said. But when Covenant and the Stonedownors looked at her sharply, she muttered, “I'll tell you about it in the morning.” Wrapping blankets around her as if they were a buckler against being touched, she turned away.
For a while after Sunder and Hollian had gone to their rest, Covenant sat and watched the fire die, striving with himself, trying to resist
the way Landsdrop plucked at the bottom of his mind, to guess what Linden had learned about the Sunbane, to find the courage he needed for the Sarangrave.
You are mine.
He awoke, haggard and power-haunted, shortly before dawn and found that Linden and the Stonedownors, with Cail, Harn, and Stell, had already left their beds to stand on the edge of Landsdrop. The air was cold; and his face felt stiff and dirty, as if his beard were the grip of his dreams, clutching his visage with, unclean fingers. Shivering, he arose, slapped his arms to warm them, then accepted a drink of metheglin from Brinn.
As Covenant drank, Brinn said, “Ur-Lord.”
His manner caught Covenant's attention like a hand on his shoulder. Brinn looked as inscrutable as stone in the crepuscular air; yet his very posture gave an impression of importance.
“We do not trust these Coursers.”
Covenant frowned. Brinn had taken him by surprise.
“The old tellers,” Brinn explained, "know the tale which Runnik of the Bloodguard told to High Lord Elena. We have heard that the mission to the Giants of Seareach was betrayed to the lurker of the Sarangrave by Earthpower. The Earthpower of the Ranyhyn was plain to all who rode them. And the Vow of the Bloodguard was a thing of Earthpower.
“But we have sworn no life-shaping Vow. The wild magic need not be used. The Graveller and the eh-Brand need not employ their lore. The lurker need not be aware of us.”
Covenant nodded as he caught Brinn's meaning. “The Coursers,” he muttered. “Creatures of the Sunbane. You're afraid they'll give us away.”
“Yes, ur-Lord.”
Covenant winced, then shrugged. “We don't have any choice. We'll lose too much time on foot.”
Brinn acquiesced with a slight bow. For an instant, the Haruchai seemed so much like Banner that Covenant almost groaned. Bannor, too, would have voiced his doubt-and then would have accepted Covenant's decision without question. Suddenly, Covenant felt that his Dead were coming back to life, that Bannor was present in Brinn, impassive and infrangibly faithful; that Elena was reborn in Linden. The thought wrenched his heart.
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