Linden asked Sunder the same question. “Do you think the sun's going to hurt us? That's nonsense. We spent half the morning yesterday in that test of silence of yours, and the only thing we suffered from was prejudice.”
“With stone underfoot!” fumed the Graveller. “It is the first touch which destroys! You did not meet the first touch of the Sunbane unwarded by stone!”
I don't have time for this, Covenant muttered to himself. The eyes of his mind saw Marid clearly enough. Left to die in the sun. Unsteadily, he lurched into motion again.
“Fool!” Sunder shouted. “For you I betrayed my born people!”
A moment later, Linden joined Covenant.
“Find stone!” The Graveller's passion sounded like raw despair. “You destroy me! Must I slay you also?”
Linden was silent for a few steps. Then she murmured, “He believes it.”
An innominate pang ran through Covenant. Involuntarily, he stopped. He and Linden turned to face the east.
They squinted at the first fiery rim of the rising sun.
It flared red along the skyline; but the sun itself wore an aura of brown, as if it shone through cerements of dust. It touched his face with dry heat.
“Nothing,” Linden said tightly. “I don't feel anything.”
He glanced back at Sunder. The Graveller stood on his stone. His hands had covered his face, and his shoulders shook.
Because he did not know what else to do, Covenant turned away, went rigidly in search of Marid.
Linden stayed with him. Hunger had abused her face, giving her a sunken aspect; and she carried her head as if the injury behind her ear still hurt. But her jaw was set, emphasizing the firm lines of her chin, and her lips were pale with severity. She looked like a woman who did not know how to fail. He braced himself on her determination, and kept moving.
The rising of the sun had altered the ambience of the Plains. They had been silver and bearable; now they became a hot and lifeless ruin. Nothing grew or moved in the wide waste. The ground was packed and baked until it was as intractable as iron. Loose dirt turned to dust. The entire landscape shimmered with heat like the aftermath of destruction.
Striving against the stupefaction of his fatigue, Covenant asked Linden to tell him about the condition of the terrain.
“It's wrong.” She bit out words as if the sight were an obloquy directed at her personally. “It shouldn't be like this. It's like a running sore. I keep expecting to see it bleed. It isn't supposed to be like this.”
Isn't supposed to be like this! he echoed. The Land had become like Joan. Something broken.
The heat haze stung his eyes. He could not see the ground except as a swath of pale ichor; he felt that he was treading pain. His numb feet stumbled helplessly.
She caught his arm, steadied him. Clenching his old sorrow, he drew himself upright. His voice shook. “What's causing it?”
“I can't tell,” she said grimly. “But it has something to do with that ring around the sun. The sun itself”- her hands released him slowly — “seems natural.”
“Bloody hell,” he breathed. “What has that bastard done?”
But he did not expect an answer. In spite of her penetrating vision, Linden knew less than he did. Deliberately, he gave himself a VSE. Then he went on looking for Marid. In his rue and pain, the thought of a man lying bound at the mercy of the sun loomed as the one idea which made everything else abominable.
Wearily, doggedly, he and Linden trudged through the heat-leeched landscape. The dust coated his mouth with the taste of failure; the glare lanced through his eyeballs. As his weakness deepened, he drifted into a vague dizziness. Only the landmark of the mountains, now east and somewhat south of him, enabled him to keep his direction. The sun beat down as if onto an anvil, hammering moisture and strength out of him like a smith shaping futility. He did not know how he stayed on his feet. At times, he felt himself wandering over the colourless earth, through the haze, as if he were a fragment of the desolation.
He might have wandered past his goal; but Linden somehow retained more alertness. She tugged him to a stop, dragged his attention out of the slow eddying sopor of the heat. “Look.”
His lips framed empty questions. For a moment, he could not understand why he was no longer moving.
“Look,” she repeated. Her voice was an arid croak.
They stood in a wide bowl of dust. Clouds billowed from every shuffle of their feet. Before them, two wooden stakes had been driven into the ground. The stakes were some distance apart, as if they had been set to secure the arms of a man lying outstretched. Tied to the stakes were loops of rope.
The loops were intact.
A body's length from the stakes were two holes in the ground-the kind of holes made by stakes pounded in and then pulled out.
Covenant swallowed dryly. “Marid.” The word abraded his throat.
“He got away,” Linden said hoarsely.
Covenant's legs folded. He sat down, coughing weakly at the dust he raised. Got away.
Linden squatted in front of him. The nearness of her face forced him to look at her. Her voice scraped as if it were full of sand. “I don't know how he did it, but he's better off than we are. This heat's going to kill us.”
His tongue fumbled. “I had to try. He was innocent.”
Awkwardly, she reached out, wiped beads of useless sweat from his forehead. “You look awful.”
He peered at her through his exhaustion. Dirt caked her lips and cheeks, collected in the lines on either side of her mouth. Sweat-trails streaked her face. Her eyes were glazed.
“So do you.”
“Then we'd better do something about it.” A tremor eroded her effort to sound resolute. But she stood up, helped him to his feet. “Let's go back. Maybe Sunder's looking for us.”
He nodded. He had forgotten the Graveller.
But when he and Linden turned to retrace their way, they saw a figure coming darkly through the shimmer.
He stopped, squinted. Mirage? Linden stood near him as if to prevent him from losing his balance. They waited.
The figure approached until they recognized Sunder.
He halted twenty paces from them.
In his right hand, he gripped his poniard. This time, he seemed perfectly familiar with its use.
Covenant watched the Graveller dumbly, as if the knife had made them strangers to each other. Linden's hand touched a warning to his arm.
“Thomas Covenant.” Sunder's face looked like hot stone. “What is my name?”
What-? Covenant frowned at the intervening heat.
“Speak my name!” the Graveller spat fiercely. “Do not compel me to slay you.”
Slay? Covenant made an effort to reach through the confusion.
“Sunder,” he croaked. 'Graveller of Mithil Stonedown. Holder of the Sunstone.'
Incomprehension stretched Sunder's countenance. “Linden Avery?” he asked falteringly. “What is the name of my father?”
“Was,” she said in a flat tone. “His name was Nassic son of Jous. He's dead.”
Sunder gaped as if Covenant and Linden were miraculous. Then he dropped his hands to his sides. “Heaven and Earth! It is not possible. The Sunbane-Never have I beheld-” He shook his head in astonishment, “Ah, you are a mystery! How can such things be? Does one white ring alter the order of life?”
“Sometimes,” Covenant muttered. He was trying to follow a fractured sequence of memories. Everything he did was an unintentional assault on the Graveller's preconceptions. He wanted to ease Sunder with some kind of explanation. The heat haze seemed to blur the distinction between past and present. Something about his boots-? He forced words past his parched lips. “The first time I was here-” Boots-yes, that was it. Drool Rockworm had been able to locate him through the alien touch of his boots on the ground. “My boots. Her shoes. They don't come from the Land. Maybe that's what protected us.”
