The Wounded Land

he tried to find words, the darkness returned.

After a time, he heard Linden say, “You keep mentioning the Riders of the Clave.” Her voice was constricted, as if she suffered from several broken ribs. “What do they ride?”

“Great beasts,” Sunder answered, “which they name Coursers.”

“Horses?” she panted.

“Horses? I do not know this word.”

Do not —? Covenant groaned as if the pain in his arm were speaking. Not know the Ranyhyn? He saw a sudden memory in the heat-haze: the great horses of Ra rearing. They had taught him a lesson he could hardly bear about the meaning of fidelity. Now they were gone? Dead? The desecration which Lord Foul had wrought upon the Land seemed to have no end.

“Beasts are few in the Land,” Sunder went on, 'for how can they endure the Sunbane? My people have herds-some goats, a few cattle-only because large effort is made to preserve their lives. The animals are penned in a cave near the mountains, brought out only when the Sunbane permits.

“But it is otherwise with the Coursers of the Clave. They are bred in Revelstone for the uses of the Riders- beasts of great swiftness and size. It is said that those on their backs are warded from the Sunbane.” Grimly, he concluded, “We must evade all such aid if we wish to live.”

No Ranyhyn? For a time, Covenant's grief became greater than his pain. But the sun was coquelicot malice in his face, blanching what was left of him. The sleeve of his T-shirt formed a noose around his black arm; and his arm itself on Sunder's shoulder seemed to be raised above him like a mad, involuntary salute to the Sunbane. Even sorrow was leprosy, numb corruption: meaningless and irrefragable. Venom slowly closed around his heart.

Sometime later, the darkness bifurcated, so that it filled his head, and yet he could gaze out at it. He lay on his back, looking at the moon; the shadows of the riverbanks rose on either side. A breeze drifted over him, but it seemed only to fan his fever. The molten lead in his arm contradicted the taste of aliantha in his mouth.

His head rested in Linden's lap. Her head leaned against the slope of the watercourse; her eyes were closed; perhaps she slept. But he had lain with his head in a woman's lap once before, and knew the danger. Of your own volition- He bared his teeth at the moon. “It's going to kill me.” The words threatened to strangle him. His body went rigid, straining against invisible poison. “I'll never give you the ring. Never.”

Then he understood that he was delirious. He watched himself, helpless, while he faded in and out of nightmare, and the moon crested overhead.

Eventually, he heard Sunder rouse Linden. “We must journey now for a time,” the Graveller said softly, “if we wish to find new aliantha. We have consumed all that is here.”

She sighed as if the vigil she kept galled her soul.

“Does he hold?” asked Sunder.

She shifted so that she could get to her feet. “It's the aliantha” she murmured. “If we keep feeding him-”

Ah, you are stubborn yet. Are stubborn yet stubborn yet.

Then Covenant was erect, crucified across the shoulders of his companions. At first, he suffered under unquiet dreams of Lord Foul, of Marid lying throat-cut beneath an angry sun. But later he grew still, drifted into visionary fields-dew-bedizened leas decked with eglantine and meadow rue. Linden walked among them. She was Lena and Atiaran: strong, and strongly hurt; capable of love; thwarted. And she was Elena, corrupted by a misbegotten hate-child of rape, who destroyed herself to break the Law of Death because she believed that the dead could bear the burdens of the living.

Yet she was none of these. She was herself, Linden Avery, and her touch cooled his forehead. His arm was full of ashes, and his sleeve no longer cut into the swelling. Noon held the watercourse in a vice of heat; but he could breathe, and see. His heart beat un-self-consciously. When he looked up at her, the sun made her hair radiant about her head.

“Sunder.” Her tone sounded like tears. “He's going to be all right.”

“A rare poison, this aliantha” the Graveller replied grimly. “For that lie, at least, the Clave must give an accounting.”

Covenant wanted to speak; but he was torpid in the heat, infant-weak. He shifted his hips in the sand, went back to sleep.

When he awakened again, there was sunset above him. He lay with his head on Linden's lap under the west bank of the river, and the sky was streaked with orange and pink, sunlight striking through dust-laden air. He felt brittle as an old bone; but he was lucid and alive. His beard itched. The swelling had receded past his elbow; his forearm had faded from blackness to the lavender of shadows. Even the bruises on his face seemed to have healed. His shirt was long dry now, sparing him the smell of blood.

Dimness obscured Linden's mien; but she was gazing down at him, and he gave her a wan smile. “I dreamed about you.”

“Something good, I hope.” She sounded like the shadows.

“You were knocking at my door,” he said because his heart was full of relief. “I opened it, and shouted, 'Goddamn it, if I wanted visitors I'd post a sign!” You gave me a right cross that almost broke my jaw. It was love at first sight.”

At that, she turned her head away as if he had hurt her. His smile fell apart. Immediately, his relief became the old familiar ache of loneliness, isolation made more poignant by the fact that she was not afraid of him. “Anyway,” he muttered with a crooked grimace like an apology, “it made sense at the time.”

She did not respond. Her visage looked like a helm in the crepuscular air, fortified against any affection or kinship.

A faint distant pounding accentuated the twilight; but Covenant hardly heard it until Sunder leaped suddenly down the east bank into the watercourse. “Rider!” he cried, rushing across the sand to crouch at Linden's side. “Almost I was seen.”

Linden coiled under Covenant, poised herself to move. He clambered into a sitting position, fought his heart and head for balance. He was in no condition to flee.

Fright sharpened Linden's whisper. “Is he coming this way?”

“No,” replied Sunder quickly. “He goes to Mithil Stonedown.”

“Then we're safe?” Already the noise was almost gone.

“No. The Stonedown will tell him of our flight. He will not ignore the escape of the halfhand and the white ring.”

Her agitation increased. “He'll come after us?”

“Beyond doubt. The Stonedown will not give pursuit. Though they have lost the Sunstone, they will fear to encounter Marid. But no such fear will restrain the Rider. At the sun's rising — if not before — he will be ahunt for us.” In a tone like a hard knot, he concluded, “We must go.”

“Go?” Linden murmured in distraction. “He's still too weak.” But an instant later she pulled herself erect, “We'll have to.”

Covenant did not hesitate. He extended a hand to Sunder. When the Graveller raised him to his feet, he rested on Sunder's shoulder while frailty whirled in his head, and forced his mouth to shape words. “How far have we come?”

“We are no more than six leagues by the River from Mithil Stonedown,” Sunder answered. “See,” he said, pointing southward. “It is not far.”

Rising there roseate in the sunset were mountain-heads- the west wall of the Mithil valley. They seemed dangerously near. Six! Covenant groaned to himself. In two days. Surely a Rider could cover that distance in one morning.

He turned back to his companions. Standing upright in the waterway, he had better light; he could see them clearly. Loss and self-doubt, knowledge of lies and fear of truth, had burrowed into Sunder's countenance. He had been bereft of everything which had enabled him to accept what he had done to his son, to his wife. In exchange,