The Wounded Land

Her groan jerked up his head, heaved him to his hands and knees. Following her wounded stare, he saw what had dismayed her.

There was no firewood. The rain had washed the gravel clean. And the small patch of shore was impenetrably surrounded by a tangle of briar with long barbed thorns. Exhaustion and tears thickened her voice as she moaned, “What are we going to do?”

Covenant tried to speak, but was too weak to make any sound.

The Graveller locked his weary knees, mustered a scant smile. “The ur-Lord has granted permission. Be of good heart. Some little warmth will ease us greatly.”

Lurching to his feet, Covenant watched blankly as Sunder approached the thickest part of the briar.

The muscles of his jaw knotted and released irrhythmically, like a faltering heartbeat. But he did not hesitate. Reaching his left hand in among the thorns, he pressed his forearm against one of the barbs and tore a cut across his skin.

Covenant was too stunned by fatigue and cold and responsibility to react. Linden flinched, but did not move.

With a shudder, Sunder smeared the welling blood onto his hands and face, then took out his orcrest. Holding the Sunstone so that his cut dripped over it, he began to chant.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Covenant trembled in his bones, thinking that without sunlight Sunder would not be able to succeed. But suddenly a red glow awakened in the translucent stone. Power the colour of Sunder's blood shafted in the direction of the sun.

The sun had already set behind a line of hills, but the Sunstone was unaffected by the intervening terrain; Sunder's vermeil shaft struck toward the sun's hidden position. Some distance from the cove, the shaft disappeared into the dark base of the hills; but its straight, bright power was not hindered.

Still chanting, Sunder moved his hands so that the shaft encountered a thick briar stem. Almost at once, flame burst from the wood.

When the stem was well afire, he shifted his power to the nearest branches.

The briar was wet and alive; but his shaft lit new stems and twigs easily, and the tangle was so dense that the flames fed each other. Soon he had created a self-sustaining bonfire.

He fell silent; and the blood-beam vanished. Tottering weakly, he went to the River to wash himself and the Sunstone.

Covenant and Linden hunched close to the blaze. Twilight was deepening around them. At their backs, the Mithil sounded like the respiration of the sea. In the firelight, Covenant could see that her lips were blue with cold, her face drained of blood. Her eyes reflected the flames as if they were devoid of any other vision. Grimly, he hoped that she would find somewhere the desire or the resolution to endure.

Shortly, Sunder returned, carrying his sack of ussusimiel. Linden bestirred herself to tend his arm; but he declined quietly. “I am a Graveller,” he murmured. “Such work would not have fallen to me, were I slow of healing.” He raised his forearm, showed her that the bleeding had already stopped. Then he sat down near the flames, and began to prepare a ration of melons for supper.

The three of them ate in silence, settled themselves for the night in silence. Covenant was seeking within himself for the courage to face another day under the sun of rain. He guessed that his companions were doing the same. They wore their private needs like cerements, and slept in isolation.

The next day surpassed Covenant's worst expectations. As clouds sealed the Plains, the wind mounted to rabid proportions, Whipping the River into froth and flailing rain like the barbs of a scourge. Lightning and thunder bludgeoned each other across the heavens. In flashes, the sky became as lurid as the crumbling of a firmament, as loud as an avalanche. The raft rode the current like dead wood, entirely at the mercy of the Mithil.

Covenant thrashed and clung in constant fear of the lightning, expecting it to strike the raft, to fry him and his companions. But that killing blow never fell. Late in the day, the lightning itself granted them an unexpected reprieve. Downriver from them, a blue-white bolt sizzled into a stand of prodigious eucalyptus. One of the trees burned like a torch.

Sunder yelled at his companions. Together, they heaved the raft toward the bank, then left the River and hastened to the trees. They could not approach the burning eucalyptus; but when a blazing branch fell nearby, they used other dead wood to drag the branch out from under the danger of the tree. Then they fed brush, broken tree limbs, eucalyptus leaves as big as scythes, to the flames until the blaze was hot enough to resist the rain.

The burning tree and the campfire shed heat like a benediction. The ground was thick with leaves which formed the softest bed Covenant and his companions had had for days. Sometime after sunset, the tree collapsed, but it fell away from them; after that they were able to rest without concern.

Early in the dawn, Sunder roused Covenant and Linden so that they would have time to break their fast before the sun rose. The Graveller was tense and distracted, anticipating a change in the Sunbane. When they had eaten, they went down to the riverbank and found a stretch of fiat rock where they could stand to await the morning. Through the gaunt and blackened trees, they saw the sun cast its first glance over the horizon.

It appeared baleful, fiery and red; it wore coquelicot like a crown of thorns, and cast a humid heat entirely unlike the fierce intensity of the desert sun. Its corona seemed insidious and detrimental. Linden's eyes flinched at the sight. And Sunder's face was strangely blanched. He made an instinctive warding gesture with both hands. “Sun of pestilence,” he breathed; and his tone winced. “Ah, we have been fortunate. Had this sun come upon us after the desert sun, or the fertile-” The thought died in his throat. “But now, after a sun of rain-” He sighed. “Fortunate, indeed.”

“How so?” asked Covenant. He did not understand the attitude of his companions. His bones yearned for the relief of one clear clean day. “What does this sun do?”

“Do?” Sunder gritted. “What harm does it not? It is the dread and torment of the Land. Still water becomes stagnant. Growing things rot and crumble. All who eat or drink of that which has not been shaded are afflicted with a disease which few survive and none cure. And the insects-!”

“He's right,” Linden whispered with her mouth full of dismay, “Oh, my God.”

“It is the Mithil River which makes us fortunate, for it will not stagnate. Until another desert sun, it will continue to flow from its springs, and from the rain. And it will ward us in other ways also.” The reflected red in Sunder's eyes made him look like a cornered animal. “Yet I cannot behold such a sun without faintheartedness. My people hide in their homes at such a time and pray for a sun of two days. I ache to be hidden also. I am homeless and small against the wideness of the world, and in all the Land I fear a sun of pestilence more than any other thing.”

Sunder's frank apprehension affected Covenant like guilt. To answer it, he said, “You're also the only reason we're still alive.”

“Yes,” the Graveller responded as if he were listening to his own thoughts rather than to Covenant.

“Yes!” Covenant snapped. “And someday every Stonedown is going to know that this Sunbane is not the only way to live. When that day comes, you're going to be just about the only person in the Land who can teach them anything.”

Sunder was silent for a time. Then he asked distantly, “What will I teach them?”

“To remake the Land.” Deliberately, Covenant included Linden in his passion. “It used to be a place of such health and loveliness-if you saw it, it would break your heart.” His voice gave off gleams of rage and love. “That can be true again.” He glared at his companions, daring them to doubt him.

Linden covered her gaze; but Sunder turned and met Covenant's ire. “Your words have no meaning. No man or woman can remake the Land. It is in the hands of the Sunbane, for good or ill. Yet this I say to you,” he grated when Covenant began to protest. “Make the attempt.” Abruptly, he lowered his eyes. “I can no longer bear to believe that Nassic my father was a mere witless fool.” Retrieving his sack of melons, he went brusquely and tied it to the centre of the raft.

“I hear you,” Covenant muttered. He felt an unexpected desire for violence. “I hear you.”

Linden touched his arm. “Come on.” She did not meet his glance. “It's going to be dangerous here.”

He followed mutely as she and Sunder launched the raft.

Soon they were out in the centre of the Mithil, riding the current under a red-wreathed sun and a cerulean sky. The warmer air made the water almost pleasant; and the pace of the River had slowed during the night, easing the management of the raft. Yet the sun's aurora nagged at Covenant. Even to his superficial sight, it looked like a