The Wounded Land

Abruptly, as if Covenant had closed a door in his mind, the wild magic subsided. He emerged from the flame; his ring flickered and went out. His legs started to fold.

Linden surged to her feet, caught him before he fell. Wrapping her arms around him, she held him upright.

Then Sunder appeared, carrying the knapsack. He ran forward, shouting, “Flee! Swiftly, lest they regain their wits and pursue us!” Blood still marked a new cut on his left forearm. As he passed her, he snatched at Hollian's arm. She resisted; she was too numb with shock to understand what was happening. He spun on her, fumed into her face, “Do you covet death?”

His urgency pierced her stupor. She regained her alertness with a moan. 'No. I will come. But-but I must have my Iianar.' pointed at the wand in Croft's hands.

Sunder marched over to the tall Stonedownor. Croft's grasp tightened reflexively on the wood.

Wincing with pain, Sunder struck Croft a sharp blow in the stomach. As the taller man doubled over, Sunder neatly plucked the Iianar from him.

“Come!” Sunder shouted at Linden and Hollian. “Now!”

A strange grim relief came over Linden. Her first assessments of Covenant had been vindicated; at last, he had shown himself capable of significant power. Bracing his left arm over her shoulders, she helped him out of the centre of the Stonedown.

Sunder took Hollian's wrist. He led the way among the houses as fast as Covenant could move.

The vale was dark now; only the crescent moon, and the reflection of dying embers along the walls, lit the ravine. The breeze carried a sickly odour of rot from across the Mithil, and the water looked black and viscid, like a Satanist's chrism. But no one hesitated. Hollian seemed to accept her rescue with mute incomprehension. She helped Linden ease Covenant into the water, secure him across the raft. Sunder urged them out into the River, and they went downstream clinging to the wood.

Eleven: The Corruption of Beauty

THERE was no pursuit. Covenant's power had stunned the people of Crystal Stonedown; the Rider had lost both sceptre and Courser; and the River was swift. Soon Linden stopped looking behind her, stopped listening for the sounds of chase. She gave her concern to Covenant.

He had no strength left, made no effort to grip the raft, did not even try to hold up his head. She could not hear his respiration over the lapping of the water, and his pulse seemed to have withdrawn to a place beyond her reach. His face looked ghastly in the pale moonlight. All her senses groaned to her that he suffered from a venom of the soul.

His condition galled her. She clung to him, searching among her ignorances and incapacities for some way to succour him. A voice in her insisted that if she could feel his distress so acutely she ought to be able to affect it somehow, that surely the current of perception which linked her to him could run both ways. But she shied away from the implications. She had no power, had nothing with which to oppose his illness except the private blood of her own life. Her fear of so much vulnerability foiled her, left her cursing because she lacked even the limited resources of her medical bag-lacked anything which could have spared her this intimate responsibility for his survival.

For a time, her companions rode the River in silence. But at last Hollian spoke. Linden was dimly cognizant of the young woman's plight. The en-Brand had been surrendered to death by her own village, and had been impossibly rescued-Eventually, all the things she did not understand overcame her reluctance. She breathed clenched apprehension into the darkness. “Speak to me. I do not know you.”

“Your pardon.” Sunder's tone expressed weariness and useless regret. “We have neglected courtesy. I am Sunder son of Nassic, at one time — ” he became momentarily bitter — “Graveller of Mithil Stonedown, fourscore leagues to the south. With me are Linden Avery the Chosen and ur-Lord Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and white gold wielder. They are strangers to the Land.”

Strangers, Linden murmured. She saw herself as an unnatural visitant. The thought had sharp edges on all sides.

The eh-Brand answered like a girl remembering her manners with difficulty. “I am Hollian Amith-daughter, eh-Brand of Crystal Stonedown. I am-” She faltered, then said in a sore voice, “I know not whether to give you thanks for redeeming my life-or curses for damning my home. The na-Mhoram's Grim will blacken Crystal Stonedown forever.”

Sunder spoke roughly. “Perhaps not.”

“How not?” she demanded in her grief. “Surely Sivit na-Mhoram-wist will not forbear. He will ride forthwith to Revelstone, and the Grim will be spoken. Nothing can prevent it.”

“He will not ride to Revelstone. I have slain his Courser.” Half to himself, Sunder muttered, “The Rede did not reveal to me that a Sunstone may wield such might.”

Hollian gave a low cry of relief. “And the rukh with which he moulds the Sunbane is destroyed. Thus he cannot call down ill upon my people.” A recovery of hope silenced her. She relaxed in the water as if it were a balm for her fears.

Covenant's need was loud in Linden's ears. She tried to deafen herself to it. “The Rider's sceptre — his rukh? Where did he get the blood to use it? I didn't see nun cut himself.”

“The Riders of the Clave,” Sunder responded dourly, “are not required to shed themselves. They are fortified by the young men and women of the Land. Each rukh is hollow, and contains the blood with which the Sunbane is wielded.”

Echoes of the outrage which had determined her to rescue Hollian awoke in Linden. She welcomed them, explored them, hunting for courage. The rites of the Sunbane were barbaric enough as Sunder practiced them. To be able to achieve such power without personal cost seemed to her execrable. She did not know how to reconcile her ire with what she had heard of the Clave's purpose, its reputation for resistance to the Sunbane. But she was deeply suspicious of that reputation. She had begun to share Covenant's desire to reach Revelstone.

But Covenant was dying.

Everything returned to Covenant and death.

After a while, Hollian spoke again. A different fear prompted her to ask, “Is it wild magic? Wild magic in sooth?”

“Yes,” the Graveller said.

“Then why-?” Linden could feel Hollian's disconcertion. “How did it transpire that Mithil Stonedown did not slay him, as the Rede commands?”

“I did not permit it,” replied Sunder flatly. “In his name, I turned from my people, so that he would not be shed,”

“You are a Graveller,” Hollian whispered in her surprise. “A Stonedownor like myself. Such a deed-surely it was difficult for you. How were you brought to commit such transgression?”

“Daughter of Amith,” Sunder answered like a formal confession, 'I was brought to it by the truth of the Rede. The words of the ur-Lord were words of beauty rather than evil. He spoke as one who owns both will and power to give his words substance. And in my heart the truth of the Rede was unbearable.

“Also,” he went on grimly, “I have been made to learn that the Rede itself contains falsehood.”

“Falsehood?” protested Hollian. “No. The Rede is the life of the Land. Were it false, all who rely upon it would die.”

Sunder considered for a moment, then said, “Eh-Brand, do you know the aliantha?”

She nodded. “It is most deadly poison.”

“No.” His certitude touched Linden. In spite of all that had happened, he possessed an inner resilience she could not match. “It is good beyond any other fruit. I speak from knowledge. For three suns, we have eaten aliantha at every chance.”

“Surely”- Hollian groped for arguments — “it is the cause of the ur-Lord's sickness?”

“No. This sickness has come upon him previously, and the aliantha gave him