ear. Frowning, she shifted into a sitting position. Now she did not look at him. “I don't understand,” she said stiffly. 'First you tell me this is a dream-then you say it's real. First you're dying back there in the woods-then you're healed by some kind of-some kind of magic. First Lord Foul is a figment-then he's real.“ In spite of her control, her voice trembled slightly. ”Which is it? You can't have it both ways.“ Her fist clenched. ”You could be dying.'
Ah, I have to have it both ways, Covenant murmured. It's like vertigo. The answer is in the contradiction-in the eye of the paradox. But he did not utter his thought aloud.
Yet Linden's question relieved him. Already, her restless mind-that need which had rejected his efforts to warn her, had driven her to follow him to his doom-was beginning to grapple with her situation. If she had the strength to challenge him, then her crisis was past, at least for the moment. He found himself smiling in spite of his fear.
“It doesn't matter,” he replied. “Maybe this is real-maybe it isn't. You can believe whatever you want. I'm just offering you a frame of reference, so you'll have some place to start.”
Her hands kept moving, touching herself, the stone, as if she needed tactile sensation to assure her of her own existence. After a moment, she said, “You've been here before.” Her anger had turned to pain. “It's your life. Tell me how to understand.”
“Face it,” he said without hesitation. “Go forward. Find out what happens-what's at stake. What matters to you.” He knew from experience that there was no other defence against insanity; the Land's reality and its unreality could not be reconciled. “Give yourself a chance to find out who you are.”
“I know who I am.” Her jaw was stubborn. The lines of her nose seemed precise rather than fragile; her mouth was severe by habit. “I'm a doctor.” But she was facing something she did not know how to grasp. “I don't even have my bag.” She scrutinized her hands as if she wondered what they were good for. When she met his gaze, her question was a demand as well as an appeal. “What do you believe?”
“I believe”- he made no effort to muffle his hardness — “that we've got to find some way to stop Foul. That's more important than anything. He's trying to destroy the Land. I'm not going to let him get away with that. That's who I am.”
She stared at his affirmation. “Why? What does it have to do with you? If this is a dream, it doesn't matter. And if it's-” She had difficulty saying the words. “If it's real, it's not your problem. You can ignore it”
Covenant tasted old rage. “Foul laughs at lepers.”
At that, a glare of comprehension touched her eyes. Her scowl said plainly, Nobody has the right to laugh at illness.
In a tight voice, she asked, “What do we do now?”
“Now?” He was weak with fatigue; but her question galvanized him. She had reasons, strengths, possibilities. The old man had not risked her gratuitously. “Now,” he said grimly, 'if I can hold off my vertigo, we get down from here, and go find out what kind of trouble we're in.'
“Down?” She blinked at him. “I don't know how we got up.”
To answer her, he nodded toward the mountains. When she turned, she noticed the gap in the curve of the parapet facing the cliff. He watched as she crawled to the gap, saw what he already knew was there.
The parapet circled the tip of a long spire of stone which angled toward the cliff under the Watch. There were rude stairs cut into the upper surface of the shaft.
He joined her. One glance told him that his dizziness would not be easily overcome. Two hundred feet below him, the stairs vanished in the clouds like a fall into darkness.
Five: Thunder and Lightning
“I'LL go first.” Covenant was trembling deep in his bones. He did not look at Linden. “This stair joins the cliff-but if we fall, it's four thousand feet down. Fm no good at heights. If I slip, I don't want to take you with me.” Deliberately, he set himself at the gap, feet first so that he could back through it.
There he paused, tried to resist the vertigo which unmoored his mind by giving himself a VSE. But the exercise aroused a pang of leper's anxiety. Under the blue-tinged sun, his skin had a dim purple cast, as if his leprosy had already spread up his arms, affecting the pigmentation, killing the nerves.
A sudden weakness yearned in his muscles, making his shoulders quiver. The particular numbness of his dead nerves had not altered, for better or worse. But the diseased hue of his flesh looked fatal and prophetic; it struck him like a leap of intuition. One of his questions answered itself. Why was Linden here? Why had the old man spoken to her rather than to him? Because she was necessary. To save the Land when he failed.
“Covenant?” Concern sharpened Linden's voice. “Are you all right?”
He could not reply. The simple fact that she was worried about him, was capable of worrying about him when she was under so much stress, multiplied the dismay in his bones. His eyes clung to the stone, searching for strength.
“Covenant!” Her demand was like a slap in the face. “I don't know how to help you. Tell me what to do.”
What to do. None of this was her fault. She deserved an answer. He pulled himself down into the centre of his fatigue and dizziness. Had he really doomed himself by taking Joan's place? Surely he did not have to fail? Surely the power for which he had paid such a price was not so easily discounted? Without raising his head, he gritted, “At the bottom of the stairs, to my left, there's a ledge in the cliff. Be careful.”
Coercing himself into motion, he backed through the gap.
As his head passed below the level of the Watch, he heard her whisper fiercely, “Damn you, why do you have to act so impervious? All I want to do is help.” She sounded as if her sanity depended on her ability to be of help.
But he could not afford to think about her; the peril of the stairs consumed his attention. He worked his way down them as if they were a ladder, clutching them with his hands, kicking each foot into them to be sure it was secure before he trusted it. His gaze never left his hands. They strained on the steps until the sinews stood out like desperation.
The void around him seemed fathomless. He could hear the emptiness of the wind. And the swift seething of the clouds below him had a hypnotic power, sucking at his concentration. Long plunges yawned all around him. But he knew this fear. Holding his breath, he lowered himself into the clouds-into the still centre of his vertigo.
Abruptly, the sun faded and went out. Grey gloom thickened toward midnight at every step of the descent.
A pale flash ran through the dank sea, followed almost at once by thunder. The wind mounted, rushed wetly at him as if it sought to lift him off the spire. The stone became slick. His numb fingers could not tell the difference, but the nerves in his wrists and elbows registered every slippage of his grasp.
Again, a bolt of lightning thrashed past him, illuminating the mad boil and speed of the clouds. The sky shattered. Instinctively, he flattened himself against the stone. Something in him howled, but he could not tell whether it howled aloud.
Crawling painfully through the brutal impact of the storm, he went on downward.
He marked his progress in the intensifying weight of the rain. The fine cold sting of spray against his sore face became a pelting of heavy drops like a shower of pebbles. Soon he was drenched and battered. Lightning and thunder shouted across him, articulating savagery. But the promise of the ledge drew him on.
At last, his feet found it. Thrusting away from the spire, he pressed his back to the wall of the cliff, gaping upward.
A flail of blue-white fire rendered Linden out of the darkness. She was just above the level of his head.
When she reached the ledge, he caught her so that she would not stumble over the precipice. She gripped him urgently. “Covenant!” The wind ripped her shout away; he could barely hear her. “Are you all right?”
He put his mouth to her ear. “Stay against the cliff! We've got to find shelter!”
She nodded sharply.
Clenching her right hand in his left, he turned his back on the fall and began to shuttle west along the
