The Wounded Land

he had been given a weak driven man who defied him, and a hope no larger than a wedding band.

And Linden, too, was suffering. Her skin had been painfully sunburned. She was caught in a world she did not know and had not chosen, trapped in a struggle between forces she could not comprehend. Covenant was her only link to her own life; and she had almost lost him. Ordinary mortality was not made to meet such demands. And yet she met them and refused even to accept his gratitude. She stored up pain for herself as if no other being had the right to touch her, care about her.

Regret raked at Covenant's heart. He had too much experience with the way other people bore the cost of his actions.

But he accepted it. There was a promise in such pain. It gave him power. With power, he had once wrested meaning for all the blood lost in his name from Lord Foul's worst Despite.

For a moment while his companions waited, trying to contain their haste, he gave himself a VSE. Then he said tightly, “Come on. I can walk,” and began to shamble northward along the watercourse.

With the thought of a Rider pressing against his back, he kept his legs in motion for half a league. But the aftermath of the venom had left him tabid. Soon he was forced to ask for help. He turned to Sunder; but the Graveller told him to rest, then scrambled out of the riverbed.

Covenant folded unwillingly to the ground, sat trying to find an answer to the incapacity which clung to his bones. As the moon rose, Sunder returned with a double handful of aliantha.

Eating his share of the treasure-berries, Covenant felt new strength flow into him, new healing. He needed water, but his thirst was not acute. When he was done, he was able to regain his feet, walk again.

With the help of frequent rests, more aliantha, and support from his companions, he kept moving throughout the night. Darkness lay cool and soothing on the South Plains, as if all the fiery malison of the Sunbane had been swept away, absorbed by the gaps of midnight between the stars. And the sandy bottom of the Mithil made easy going. He drove himself. The Clave had commanded his death. Under the moon, he held his weakness upright; but after moonset, his movements became a long stagger of mortality, dependent and visionless.

They rested before dawn; but Sunder roused them as sunrise drew near. “The doom of the Sunbane approaches,” he murmured. “I have seen that your footwear spares you. Yet you will ease my heart if you join me.” He nodded toward a broad plane of rock nearby-clean stone large enough to protect a score of people.

Trembling with exhaustion, Covenant tottered to his feet. Together, the companions stood on the rock to meet the day.

When the sun broke the horizon, Sunder let out a cry of exultation. The brown was gone. In its place, the sun wore a coronal of chrysoprase. The light green touch on Covenant's face was balmy and pleasant, like a caress after the cruel pressure of the desert sun.

“A fertile sun!” Sunder crowed. “This will hamper pursuit, even for a Rider.” Leaping off the rock as if he had been made young again, he hurried to find a clear patch of sand. With the haft of his poniard, he ploughed two swift furrows across the sand; and in them he planted a handful of his ussusimiel seeds. “First we will have food!” he called. “Can water be far behind?”

Covenant turned toward Linden to ask her what she saw in the sun's green. Her face was slack and puffy, untouched by Sunder's excitement; she was pushing herself too hard, demanding too much of her worn spirit. And her eyes were dull, as if she were being blinded by the things she saw-essential things neither Covenant nor Sunder could discern.

He started to frame a question; but then the sunshine snatched his attention away. He gaped at the west bank.

The light had moved partway down the side of the watercourse. And wherever it touched soil, new-green sprouts and shoots thrust into view.

They grew with visible rapidity. Above the rim of the river, a few bushes raised their heads high enough to be seen. Green spread downward like a mantle, following the sun-line cast by the east wall; plants seemed to scurry out of the dirt. More bush tops appeared beyond the bank. Here and there, young saplings reached toward the sky. Wherever the anademed sunlight fell, the wasteland of the past three days became smothered by verdure.

“The fertile sun,” Sunder breathed gladly. “None can say when it will rise. But when it rises, it brings life to the Land.”

“Impossible,” Covenant whispered. He kept blinking his eyes, unconsciously trying to clear his sight, kept staring at the way grass and vines came teeming down the riverbank, at the straight new trees which were already showing themselves beyond the shrubs along the river's edge. The effect was eldritch, and frightening. It violated his instinctive sense of Law, “Impossible.”

“Forsooth,” chuckled the Graveller. He seemed new-made by the sun. “Do your eyes lack credence? Surely you must now acknowledge that there is truth in the Sunbane.”

“Truth-?” Covenant hardly heard Sunder. He was absorbed in his own amazement. “There's still Earthpower-that's obvious. But it was never like this.” He felt an intuitive chill of danger. “What's wrong with the Law?” Was that it? Had Foul found some way to destroy the Law itself? The Law?

“Often,” Sunder said, “Nassic my father sang of Law. But he did not know its import. What is Law?”

Covenant stared sightlessly at the Graveller. “The Law of Earthpower.” Fearsome speculations clogged his throat; dread rotted his guts. “The natural order. Seasons. Weather. Growth and decay. What happened to it? What has he done?”

Sunder frowned as if Covenant's attitude were a denial of his gladness. “I know nothing of such matters. The Sunbane I know-and the Rede which the na-Mhoram has given us for our survival. But seasons — Law. These words have no meaning.”

No meaning, Covenant groaned. No, of course not. If there were no Law, if there had been no Law for centuries, the Stonedownor could not possibly understand. Impulsively, he turned to Linden. “Tell him what you see.”

She appeared not to hear him. She stood at the side of the rock, wearing an aspect of defenceless hebetude.

“Linden!” he cried, driven by his mortal apprehension. “Tell him what you see.”

Her mouth twisted as if his demand were an act of brutality. She pushed her hands through her hair, glanced up at the green-wreathed sun, then at the green-thick bank.

Shuddering, she permitted herself to see.

Her revulsion was all the answer Covenant needed. It struck him like an instant of shared vision, momentarily gifting or blighting his senses with the acuity they lacked. Suddenly, the long grass and curling vines, the thick bushes, the saplings no longer seemed lush to him. Instead, they looked frenetic, hysterical. They did not spring with spontaneous luxuriance out of the soil; they were forced to grow by the unnatural scourge of the sun. The trees clawed toward the sky like drowners; the creepers writhed along the ground as if they lay on coals; the grass grew as raw and immediate as a shriek.

The moment passed, leaving him shaken.

“It's wrong.” Linden rubbed her arms as if what she saw made her skin itch like an infestation of lice. The redness of her sunburn aggravated all her features. “Sick. Evil. It's not supposed to be like this. It's killing me.” Abruptly, she sat down, hid her face in her hands. Her shoulders clenched as if she did not dare to weep.

Covenant started to ask, Killing you? But Sunder was already shouting.

“Your words signify nothing! This is the fertile sun! It is not wrong. It simply is. Thus the Sunbane has been since the punishment began. Behold!”

He stabbed a gesture toward the sandy patch in which he had planted his seeds. The sun-line lay across one of his furrows. In the light, ussusimiel were sprouting.

'Because of this, we will have food! The fertile sun gives life to all the Land. In Mithil Stonedown-now, while you stand thus decrying wrong and ill-every man, woman, and child sings. All who have strength are at labour. While the fertile sun holds, they will labour until they fall from weariness. Searching first to discover places where the soil is of a kind to support crops, then striving to clear that ground so seeds may be planted. Thrice in this one day, crops will be planted and harvested, thrice each day of the fertile sun.

“And if people from another Stonedown come upon this place, seeking proper soil for themselves, then there