ground.
Atiaran shouted, “Run!” but he hauled up short, swung trembling around to face the pursuit.
A leaping figure flashed over the edge of the cut and dropped toward him. He dodged away from the plummet, flung up his arms to ward off the figure's swinging arm.
As the attacker passed, he scored the backs of Covenant's fingers with a knife. Then he hit the ground and rolled, came to his feet with his back to the east wall of the cut, his knife weaving threats in front of him.
The sunlight seemed to etch everything starkly in Covenant's vision. He saw the unevennesses of the wall, the shadows stretched under them like rictus.
The attacker was a young man with a powerful frame and dark hair-unmistakably a Stonedownor, though taller than most. His knife was made of stone, and woven into the shoulders of his tunic was his family insignia, a pattern like crossed lightning. Rage and hate strained his features as if his skull were splitting. “Raver!” he yelled. “Ravisher!”
He approached swinging his blade. Covenant was forced to retreat until he stood in the stream, ankle-deep in cool water.
Atiaran was running toward them, though she was too far away to intervene between Covenant and the knife.
Blood welled from the backs of his fingers. His pulse throbbed in the cuts, throbbed in his fingertips.
He heard Atiaran's commanding shout: “Triock!”
The knife slashed closer. He saw it as clearly as if it were engraved on his eyeballs.
His pulse pounded in his fingertips.
The young man gathered himself for a killing thrust.
Atiaran shouted again, “Triock! Are you mad? You swore the Oath of Peace!”
In his fingertips?
He snatched up his hand, stared at it. But his sight was suddenly dim with awe. He could not grasp what was happening.
That's impossible, he breathed in the utterest astonishment. Impossible.
His numb, leprosy-ridden fingers were aflame with pain.
Atiaran neared the two men and stopped, dropped her pack to the ground. She seemed to place a terrible restraint on Triock; he thrashed viciously where he stood. As if he were choking on passion, he spat out, “Kill him! Raver!”
“I forbid!” cried Atiaran. The intensity of her command struck Triock like a physical blow. He staggered back a step,then threw up his head and let out a hoarse snarl of frustration and rage.
Her voice cut sharply through the sound. “Loyalty is due. You took the Oath. Do you wish to damn the Land?”
Triock shuddered. In one conclusive movement, he flung down his knife so that it drove itself into the hilt in the ground by his feet. Straightening fiercely, he hissed at Atiaran, “He has ravished Lena. Last night.”
Covenant could not grasp the situation. Pain was a sensation, a splendour, his fingers had forgotten; he had no answer to it except, Impossible. Impossible. Unnoticed, his blood ran red and human down his wrist.
A spasm twiched across his face. Darkness gathered in the air about him; the atmosphere of the file seethed as if it were full of beating wings, claws wich flashed toward his face. He groaned, “Impossible.”
But Atiaran and Triock were consumed with each other, thier eyes avoided him as if he were a plague spot. As Triock's words penetrated her, she crumbled to her knees, covered her face with her hands, and dropped her forehead to the ground. Her shoulders shook as though she was sobbing, though she made no sound; and over her anguish he said bitterly, “I found her in the hills when this day's sun first touched the plains. You know my love for her. I observed her at the gathering, and was not made happy by the manner in which this fell stanger dazzled her. It wrung my heart that she should be so touched by a man whose comings and goings no one could ever know. So, late at night I enquired of Trell your husband, and learned that she said she meant to sleep with a friend-Terass daughter of Annoria. Then I enquired of Terass-and she knew nothing of Lena's porpose. Then a shadow of fear came upon me-for when have any of these people been liars? I spent the whole of the night searching for her. And at first light I found her, her shift rent and blood about her. She strove to flee from me, but she was weak from cold and pain and sorrow, and in a moment clung in my arms and told me what-what this Raver had done.
“Then I took her to Trell her father. While he cared for her I went away, purposing to kill the stranger. When I saw you, I followed, believing that my purpose was yours also-that you led him into the hills to destroy him. But you mean to save him-him, the ravisher of Lena your daughter! How has he corrupted your heart? You forbid? Atiaran Trell-mate! She was a child fair enough to make a man weep for joy at seeing her-broken without consent or care. Answer me. What have Oaths to do with us?”
The wild, rabid swirl of dark wings forced covenant down until he huddled in the stream. Images reeled across his brain-memories of the leprosarium, of doctors saying,
Slowly, Atiaran raised her head and spread her arms, as if opening her breast to an impaling thrust from the sky. Her face was carved with pain, and her eyes were dark craters of grief, looking inward on her compromised humanity. “Trell, help me,” she breathed weakly. Then her voice gathered strength, and her anguish seemed to make the air about her ache. “Alas! Alas for the young in the world! Why is the burden of hating ill so hard to bear? Ah, Lena my daughter! I see what you have done. I understand. It is a brave deed, worthy of praise and pride! Forgive me that I cannot be with you in this trial.”
But after a while, her gaze swung outward again. She climbed unsteadily to her feet, and stood swaying for a moment before she rasped hoarsely, “Loyalty is due. I forbid your vengeance.”
“Does he go unpunished?” protested Triock.
“There is peril in the Land,” she answered. “Let the Lords punish him.” A taste of blood sharpened her voice. “They will know what to think of a stranger who attacks the innocent.” Then her weakness returned. “The matter is beyond me. Triock, remember your Oath.” She gripped her shoulders, knotted her fingers in the leaf pattern of her robe as if to hold her sorrow down.
Triock turned toward Covenant. There was something broken in the 'young man's face-a shattered or wasted capacity for contentment, joy. He snarled with the force of an anathema, “I know you, Unbeliever. We will meet again.” Then abruptly he began moving away. He accelerated until he was sprinting, beating out his reproaches on the hard floor of the file. In a moment, he reached a place where the west wall sloped away, and then he was out of sight, gone from the cut into the hills.
“Impossible,” Covenant murmured. “Can't happen. Nerves don't regenerate.” But his fingers hurt as if they were being crushed with pain. Apparently nerves did regenerate in the Land. He wanted to scream against the darkness and the terror, but he seemed to have lost all control of his throat, voice, self.
As if from a distance made great by abhorrence or pity, Atiaran said, “You have made of my heart a wilderland.”
“Nerves don't regenerate.” Covenant's throat clenched as if he were gagging, but he could not scream. “They don't.”
“Does that make you free?” she demanded softly, bitterly. “Does it justify your crime?”
“Crime?” He heard the word like a knife thrust through the beating wings. “Crime?” His blood ran from the cuts as if he were a normal man, but the flow was decreasing steadily. With a sudden convulsion, he caught hold of himself, cried miserably, “I'm in pain!”
The sound of his wail jolted him, knocked the swirling darkness back a step.
Can't happen. Of course it can't. That proves it-proves this is all a dream.
All at once, he felt an acute desire to weep. But he was a leper, and had spent too much time learning to dam such emotional channels. Lepers could not afford grief. Trembling feverishly, he plunged his cut hand into the stream.
“Pain is pain,” Atiaran grated. “What is your pain to me? You have done a black deed, Unbeliever violent and cruel, without commitment or sharing. You have given me a pain that no blood or time will wash clean. And Lena my daughter-! Ah, I pray that the Lords will punish-punish!”
