The Wounded Land

The dry watercourse was not deep. He landed in sand and whirled, searching for Linden.

She lay on her back under the shadow of the gully wall. Her skin seemed faintly red in the dimmer light; she had been so close to the graveling. He could see her as clearly as if she were engraved on his mind: her raw colour, the streaks of sweat in her wheaten hair, the frown scar between her brows like an expostulation against the life she had lived.

She was in convulsions. Her heels drummed the sand; her fingers attacked the ground on either side; spasms racked her body, arched her back. A skull-grin clinched her face. Small gasps whimpered through her teeth like shreds of pain.

Covenant dived to her side, gripped her shoulders to restrain her arms. He could not make a sound, could not thrust words past his panic.

Sunder and Hollian joined him, followed by Harn and Hergrom. Brinn, Ceer, and Stell came a moment later, bearing Cail. He, too, was in the throes of another seizure.

Sunder rested a hand on Covenant's shoulder. “It is the Sunbane sickness,” he said softly. “I am sorry. She cannot endure.”

Her whimpering turned to a rasp in her throat like a death-rattle. She seemed to be groaning, “Covenant.”

Linden! he moaned. I can't help you!

Abruptly, her eyes snapped open, staring wildly. They gaped over the rictus which bared her teeth.

“Cove-” Her throat worked as the muscles knotted, released. Her jaws were locked together like the grip of a vice. Her eyes glared white delirium at him. “Help-”

Her efforts to speak burned his heart. “I don't-” He was choking. “Don't know how.”

Her lips stretched as if she wanted to sink her teeth into the skin of his cheek. Her neck cords stood out like bone. She had to force the word past her seizure by sheer savagery.

“Voure.”

“What?” He clung to her. “Voure?”

“Give-” Her extremity cut him like a sword. “Voure”

The sap that warded off insects? His orbs were as dry as fever. “You're delirious.”

“No” The intensity of her groan pierced the air. “Mind-” Her wild, white stare demanded, beseeched. With every scrap of her determination, she fought her throat. “Clear.” The strain aggravated her convulsions. Her body kicked against his weight as if she were being buried alive. “I-” For an instant, she dissolved into whimpers. But she rallied, squeezed out, “Feel.”

Feel? he panted. Feel what?

“Voure.”

For one more horrific moment, he hung on the verge of understanding her. Then he had it.

Feel!

“Brinn!” he barked over his shoulder. “Get the voure!”

Feel! Linden could feel. She had the Land-born health sense; she could perceive the nature of her illness, understand it precisely. And the voure as well. She knew what she needed.

The angle of her stare warned him. With a jolt, he realized that no one had moved, that Brinn was not obeying him.

“Covenant,” Sunder murmured painfully. “Ur-Lord. She-I beg you to hear me. She has the Sunbane sickness. She knows not what she says. She-”

“Brinn.” Covenant spoke softly, but his lucid passion sliced through Sunder's dissuasion. “Her mind is clear. She knows exactly what she's saying. Get the voure.”

Still the Haruchai did not comply. “Ur-Lord,” he said, “the Graveller has knowledge of this sickness.”

Covenant had to release Linden's arms, clench his fists against his forehead to keep from screaming. “The only reason”- his voice juddered like a cable in a high wind — “Kevin Landwaster was able to perform the Ritual of Desecration, destroy all the rife of the Land for hundreds of years, was because the Bloodguard stood by and let him do it. He ordered them not to do anything, and he had knowledge, so they obeyed. For the rest of their lives, their Vow was corrupt, and they didn't know it. They didn't even know they were tainted until Lord Foul rubbed their noses in it. Until he proved he could make them serve him.” Foul had maimed three of them to make them resemble Covenant. “Are you going to just stand there again and let more people die?” Abruptly, his control shattered. He hammered the sand with his fists. “Get the VOURE!”

Brinn glanced at Sunder, at Cail. For a moment, he seemed to hesitate. Then he sprang from the gully toward the Coursers.

He was back almost at once, carrying Memla's leather flask of voure. With an air of disinterest, as if he eschewed responsibility, he handed it to Covenant.

Trembling, Covenant unstopped the flask. He had to apply a crushing force of will to steady his hands so that he could pour just a few drops through Linden's teeth. Then he watched in a trance of dread and hope as she fought to swallow.

Her back arched, went slack as if she had broken her spine.

His gaze darkened. The world spun in his head. His mind became the swooping and plunge of condors. He could not see, could not think, until he heard her whisper, “Now Cail.”

The Haruchai responded immediately. Her understanding of Cail's plight demonstrated her clarity of mind. Brinn took the flask, hurried to Cail's side. With Stell's help, he forced some of the voure between Cail's locked jaws.

Relaxation spread through Linden, muscle by muscle. Her breathing eased; the cords of her neck loosened. One by one, her fingers uncurled. Covenant lifted her hand, folded her broken nails in his clasp, as he watched the rigor slipping out of her. Her legs became limp along the sand. He held to her hand because he could not tell whether she were recovering or dying.

Then he knew. When Brinn came over to him and announced without inflection, “The voure is efficacious. He will mend,” he gave a low sigh of relief.

Twenty Three: Sarangrave Flat

COVENANT watched her while she slept, human and frail, until some time after sunset. Then, in the light of a campfire built by the Haruchai, he roused her. She was too weak for solid food, so he fed her metheglin diluted with water.

She was recovering. Even his blunt sight could not be mistaken about it. When she went back to sleep, he stretched out on the sand near her, and fell almost instantly into dreams.

They were dreams in which wild magic raged, savage and irremediably destructive. Nothing could be stopped, and every flare of power was the Despiser's glee. Covenant himself became a waster of the world, became Kevin on a scale surpassing all conceivable Desecrations. The white fire came from the passions which made him who he was, and he could not-!

But the stirring of the company awakened him well before dawn. Sweating in the desert chill, he climbed to his feet and looked around. The embers of the fire revealed that Linden was sitting up, with her back against the gully wall. Hergrom attended her soundlessly, giving her food.

She met Covenant's gaze. He could not read her expression in the dim light, did not know where he stood with her. His sight seemed occluded by the afterimages of nightmare. But the obscurity and importance of her face drew him to her. He squatted before her, studied her mien. After a moment, he murmured to explain himself, “I thought you were finished.”

“I thought,” she replied in a restrained voice, “I was never going to make you understand.”

“I know.” What else could he say? But the inadequacy of his responses shamed him. He felt so unable to reach her.

But while he fretted against his limitations, her hand came to him, touched the tangle of his beard. Her tone thickened. “It makes you look older.”