The Wounded Land

to Honninscrave. Honninscrave caught it, slipped his shoulders into the bindings. The First had already kicked the campfire apart. She and Honninscrave picked up brands to use as torches. Pitchwife threw the other bundle to Seadreamer, then snatched up a torch himself.

Ceer and Cail had lifted Linden. But the splint made her awkward for them. Covenant saw dazedly that they would not be able to carry her, run with her, without hurting her ankle.

He did not know what to do. His lungs ached. The lurker's rising howl tore open the scars of past attacks. Sweat burst from the bones of his skull. The skest were moving, tightening their fire around the company. There was nothing he could do.

Then Seadreamer reached Cail and Ceer. The Giant took Linden from them; his huge arms supported her as securely as a litter.

The sight unlocked Covenant's paralysis. He trusted the Giant instinctively. The company began to climb the hillside northward. He left them, turned to confront the water.

Just try it! His fists jerked threats at the fell lustre and the howl. Come on! Try to hurt us again!

Brinn yanked him away from the lakeshore and dragged him stumbling up the hill.

Reeling with exertion and anoxia, he fought to keep his feet. Dark trees leaped across his vision like aghast dancers in the nacreous light. He tripped repeatedly. But Brinn upheld him.

The lurker's cry whetted itself on pain and frustration, shrilled into his ears. At the fringes of his sight, he could see the skest. They moved in pursuit, as if the lurker's fury were a scourge at their backs.

Then Brinn impelled him over the crest of the hill.

At once, the ghost-light was cut off. Torches bounded into the jungle ahead of him. He struggled after them as if he were chasing swamp-fires. Only Brinn's support saved him from slamming into trunks, thick brush, vines as heavy as hawsers.

The howling scaled toward a shriek, then dropped to a lower, more cunning pitch. But the sound continued to impale Covenant like a swordthorn. He retched for air; the night became vertigo. He did not know where he was going.

A lurid, green blur appeared beyond the torches. The skest angled closer on the left, forcing the company to veer to the right.

More skest.

The flight of the torches swung farther to the right.

Lacking air, strength, courage, Covenant could hardly bear his own weight. His limbs yearned to fall, his chest ached for oblivion. But Hergrom gripped his other arm. Stumbling between Haruchai, he followed his companions.

For long moments, they splashed down the length of a cold stream which ran like an aisle between advancing hordes of skest. But then the stream faded into quicksand. The company lost time hunting for solid ground around the quagmire.

They gained a reach of clear dirt, soil so dead that even marsh-grass could not grow there. They began to sprint. Bruin and Hergrom drew Covenant along more swiftly than he could move.

Suddenly, the whole group crashed to a halt, as if they had blundered against an invisible wall.

The First hissed an oath like a sword-cut. Sunder and Hollian sobbed for air. Pitchwife hugged his crippled chest. Honninscrave swung in circles, scanning the night. Seadreamer stood like a tree with Linden asleep in his arms and stared into the darkness as if he had lost his sight.

With his own breath rending like an internal wound, Covenant jerked forward to see why the company had stopped.

Herded! Bloody hell.

The dead ground stretched like a peninsula out into a region of mud: mire blocked the way for more than a stone's throw on three sides. The muck stank like a charnel, seething faintly, as if corpses writhed in its depths. It looked thick enough to swallow even Giants without a trace.

Already, skest had begun to mass at the head of the peninsula, sealing the company in the lurker's trap. Hundreds of skest, scores of hundreds. They made the whole night green, pulsing like worship. Even armed with a mountain of wood, no Giant or Haruchai could have fought through that throng; and the company had no wood left except the torches.

Covenant's respiration became febrile with cursing.

He looked at his companions. Emerald etched them out of the darkness, as distinct as the accursed. Linden lay panting in Seadreamer's arms as if her sleep were troubled by nightmares. Hollian's face was bloodless under her black hair, pale as prophecy. Sunder's whole visage clenched around the grinding of his teeth. Their vulnerability wrung Covenant's heart. The Haruchai and the Giants could at least give some account of themselves before they fell. What could Linden, Sunder, and Hollian do except die?

“Ur-Lord.” Brinn's singed hair and dispassion looked ghastly in the green light. “The white ring. May these skest be driven back?”

Thousands of them? Covenant wanted to demand. I don't have the strength. But his chest could not force out words.

One of Honninscrave's torches burned down to his hand. With a grimace, he tossed the sputtering wood into the mire.

Instantly, the surface of the mud lake caught fire.

Flames capered across the mire like souls in torment. Heat like a foretaste of hell blasted against the company, drove them into a tight cluster in the centre of the peninsula.

The First discarded her torches, whipped out her sword, and tried to shout something. The lurker drowned her voice. But the Giants understood. They placed themselves around their companions, using their bodies as shields against the heat. The First, Honninscrave, and Pitchwife faced outward; Seadreamer put his back to the fire, protecting Linden.

The next instant, a concussion shook the ground. Pitchwife stumbled. Hollian, Sunder, and Covenant fell.

As Covenant climbed back to his feet, he saw a tremendous spout of flame mounting out of the mud.

It rose like a fire-storm and whirled toward the heavens. Its fury tore a gale through the night. Towering over the peninsula, it leaned to hammer the company. The howl of the lurker became a gyre of conflagration.

No!

Covenant eluded Brinn's grasp, wrenched past Honninscrave. He forged out into the heat to meet the firespout.

Baring the krill, he raised it so that its gem shone clear. Purest argent pierced the orange mudfire, defying it as hotly as lightning.

In the silence of his clogged lungs, Covenant raged words he did not understand. Words of power.

Melenkurion abatha! Duroc minus mill khakaal!

Immediately, the firespout ruptured. In broken gouts and fear, it crashed backward as if he had cut off another arm of the lurker. Flames skirted like frustrated ire across the mud. Abruptly, the air was free. Wind empty of howling fed the fire. Covenant's companions coughed and gasped as if they had been rescued from the hands of a strangler.

He knelt on the dead ground. Peals of light rang in his head, tintinnabulating victory or defeat; either one, there was no difference; triumph and desecration were the same thing. He was foundering-

But hands came to succour him. They were steady and gentle. They draped cloth over the krill, took it from his power-cramped fingers. Relative darkness poured through his eye- sockets as if they were empty pits, gaping for night. The dark spoke in Brinn's voice. “The lurker has been pained. It fears to be pained again.”

“Sooth,” the First muttered starkly. “Therefore it has given our deaths into the hands of its acolytes.”

Brinn helped Covenant to his feet. Blinking at numberless krill echoes, he fought to see. But the afterflares were too bright. He was still watching them turn to emerald when he heard Hollian's gasp. The Giants and Haruchai went rigid. Brinn's fingers dug reflexively into Covenant's arm.