The Wounded Land

He did not hear her. Wildly, he fought invisible bees, pounded his face. An inchoate cry tore through his throat.

“Sunder!” she panted. “Help me!” Ducking around Covenant, she caught him across the chest, began to drag him toward the bank. The sensation of his convulsions sickened her; but she bit down her nausea, wrestled him through the River.

The Graveller came limping after her, dragging the raft. His mien was tight with pain. A thin smear of blood stained his lips.

Reaching the bank, she dredged Covenant out of the water. Spasms ran through all his muscles, resisting her involuntarily. But his need gave her strength; she stretched him out on the ground, knelt at his side to examine him.

For one horrific moment, her fear returned, threatening to swamp her. She did not want to see what was wrong with him. She had already seen too much; the wrong of the Sunbane had excruciated her nerves so long, so intimately, that she half believed she had lost her mind. But she was a doctor; she had chosen this work for reasons which brooked no excuse of fear or repugnance or incapacity. Setting her self aside, she bent the new dimension of her senses toward Covenant.

Clenchings shook him like bursts of brain-fire. His face contorted around the two bee stings. The marks were bright red and swelling rapidly; but they were not serious. Or they were serious in an entirely different way.

Linden swallowed bile, and probed him more deeply.

His leprosy became obvious to her. It lay in his flesh like a malignant infestation, exigent and dire. But it was quiescent.

Something else raged in him. Baring her senses to it, she suddenly remembered what Sunder had said about the sun of pestilence-and what he had implied about insects. He stood over her. In spite of his pain, he swatted grimly at mosquitoes the size of dragonflies, keeping them off Covenant. She bit her lips in apprehension, looked down at Covenant's right forearm.

His skin around the pale scars left by Marid's fangs and Sunder's poniard was already bloated and dark, as if his arm had suffered a new infusion of venom. The swelling worsened as she gazed at it. It was tight and hot, as dangerous as a fresh snakebite. Again, it gave her a vivid impression of moral wrong, as if the poison were as much spiritual as physical.

Marid's venom had never left Covenant's flesh. She had been disturbed by hints of this in days past, but had failed to grasp its significance. Repulsed by aliantha, the venom had remained latent in him, waiting-Both Marid and the bees had been formed by the Sunbane: both had been driven by Ravers. The bee- stings had triggered this reaction.

That must have been the reason for the swarm's attack, the reason why the Raver had chosen bees to work its will. To produce this relapse.

Covenant gaped back at her sightlessly. His convulsions began to fade as his muscles weakened. He was slipping into shock. For a moment, she glimpsed a structure of truth behind his apparent paranoia, his belief in an Enemy who sought to destroy him. All her instincts rebelled against such a conception. But now for an instant she seemed to see something deliberate in the Sunbane, something intentional and cunning in these attacks on Covenant.

The glimpse reft her of self-trust. She knelt beside him, unable to move or choose. The same dismay which had incapacitated her when she had first seen Joan came upon her.

But then the sounds of pain reached her-the moan of Sunder's wracked breathing. She looked up at him, asking mutely for answers. He must have guessed intuitively the connection between venom and bees. That was why he defied his own hurt to prevent further insect bites. Meeting her sore gaze, he said, “Something in me has torn.” He winced at every word. “It is keen-but I think not perilous. Never have I drawn such power from the Sunstone.” She could feel his pain as a palpable emission; but he had clearly rent some of the ligatures between his ribs, not broken any of the ribs themselves, or damaged anything vital.

Yet his hurt, and his resolute self-expenditure on Covenant's behalf, restored her to herself. A measure of her familiar severity returned, steadying the labour of her heart. She climbed to her feet. “Come on. Let's get him back in the water.”

Sunder nodded. Gently, they lifted Covenant down the bank. Propping his left arm over the raft so that his right arm could hang free in the cool water, they shoved out into the centre of the current. Then they let the River carry them downstream under the bale of a red-ringed sun.

During the remainder of the afternoon, Linden struggled against her memory of Joan, her sense of failure. She could almost hear her mother whining for death. Covenant regained consciousness several times, lifted his head; but the poison always dragged him back before he could speak. Through the water, she watched the black tumescence creep avidly up his arm. It seemed much swifter than the previous time; Marid's poison had increased in virulence during its dormancy. The sight blurred her eyes. She could not silence the fears gnawing at her heart.

Then, before sunset, the River unbent among a clump of hills into a long straight line leading toward a wide ravine which opened on the Mithil. The sides of the ravine were as sheer as a barranca, and they reflected the low sunshine with a strange brilliance. The ravine was like a vale of diamonds; its walls were formed of faceted crystal which caught the light and returned it in delicate shades of white and pink. When the sun of pestilence dipped toward the horizon, washing the terrain in a bath of vermilion, the barranca became a place of rare glory.

People moved on the river-shore; but they gave no indication that they saw the raft. The River was already in shadow, and the brightness of the crystal was dazzling. Soon they left the bank and went up into the ravine.

Linden and Sunder shared a look, and began to steer toward the mouth of the barranca. In dusk macerated only by the last gleamings along the vale rim, they pulled their raft partway up the shore and carefully eased Covenant to dry ground. His arm was black and thick to the shoulder, cruelly pinched by both his ring and his shirt, and he moaned when they moved him.

She sat beside him, stroked his forehead; but her gaze was fixed on Sunder. “I don't know what to do,” she said flatly. “We're going to have to ask these people for help.”

The Graveller stood with his arms around his chest, cradling his pain. “We cannot. Have you forgotten Mithil Stonedown? We are blood that these people may shed without cost to themselves. And the Rede denounces him. I redeemed you from Mithil Stonedown. Who will redeem us here?”

She gripped herself. “Then why did we stop?”

He shrugged, winced. “We must have food. Little ussusimiel remains to us.”

“How do you propose to get it?” She disliked the sarcasm in her tone, but could not stifle it.

“When they sleep”- Sunder's eyes revealed his reluctance as clearly as words-“I will attempt to steal what we must have.”

Linden frowned involuntarily. “What about guards?”

“They will ward the hills, and the River from the hills. There is no other approach to this place. If they have not yet observed us, perhaps we are safe.”

She agreed. The thought of stealing was awkward to her; but she recognized that they had no alternative. “I'll come with you.”

Sunder began to protest; she stopped him with a brusque shake of her head. “You're not exactly healthy. If nothing else, you'll need me to watch your back. And,” she sighed, “I want to get some mirkfruit. He needs it.”

The Graveller's face was unreadable in the twilight. But he acquiesced mutely. Retrieving the last of his melons from the raft, he began to cut them open.

She ate her ration, then did what she could to feed Covenant. The task was difficult; she had trouble making him swallow the thin morsels she put in his mouth. Again, dread constricted her heart. But she suppressed it. Patiently, she fed slivers of melon to him, then stroked his throat to trigger his swallowing reflex, until he had consumed a scant meal.

When she finished, the night was deep around her, and a waning moon had just begun to crest the hills. She rested beside Covenant for a while, trying to gather up the unravelled ends of her competence. But she found herself listening to his respiration as if she expected every hoarse intake to be his last. She loathed her helplessness so keenly-A distinct fetor rode the breeze from across the River, the effect of the sun of pestilence on the vegetation. She could not rest.