Moments passed. Sunlight descended like the blade of an axe toward his head.
Though he was protected by his boots, dread ached in his bones. His pulse seemed to beat behind his eyeballs.
The light touched his hair, his forehead, his face. While the Woodhelven lay in twilight, he experienced the sunrise like an annunciation. The sun wore a corona of light brown haze. A breath of arid heat blew across him.
Damnation, he muttered. Bloody damnation.
As the glare covered his mien, blinding him to the Woodhelven, a rain of sharp pebbles began to fall on him. Scores of people threw small stones at him.
He squeezed his eyes shut, bore the pain as best he could.
When the pebbles stopped, he looked up again and saw the Graveller approaching out of the darkness.
She held a long, iron knife, single-edged and hiltless. The black metal appeared baleful in her grasp. Her visage had not lost its misery; but it also wore a corrupt exaltation which he could not distinguish from madness.
Twenty paces or more behind the Graveller stood Vain, The Woodhelvennin had wrapped him in heavy vines, trying to restrain him; but he seemed unaware of his bonds. He held himself beyond reach as if he had come simply to watch Covenant die.
But Covenant had no time to think about Vain. The Graveller demanded his attention. “Now,” she rasped. “Recompense. I will shed your life, and your blood will raise water for the Woodhelven.” She glanced down at the narrow crevice, “And with your white ring we will buy back our Stonemight from the Clave.”
Clutching his dismally-rehearsed hope, Covenant asked, “Where's your
“
“Your Sunstone.”
“Ah,” she breathed, “Sunstone. The Rede speaks of such matters.” Bitterness twisted her face. “Sunstone is permitted-yet we were reft of our Stonemight. It is not just!” She eyed Covenant as if she were anticipating the taste of his blood. “I have no Sunstone, Halfhand.”
No Sunstone? Covenant gasped inwardly. He had hoped with that to ignite his ring. But the Graveller had no Sunstone. No Sunstone. The desert sun shone on him like the bright, hot flood which had borne him into the Land. Invisible vulture-wings beat about his head-heart strokes of insanity. He could barely thrust his voice through the noise. “How can-? I thought every Graveller needed a Sunstone.” He knew this was not true, but he wanted to make her talk, delay her. He had already been stabbed once: any similar blow would surely end him. “How else can you work the Sunbane?”
“It is arduous,” she admitted, though the hunger in her gaze did not blink. “I must make use of the Rede. The Rede!” Abruptly, she spat into the crack at her feet. “For generations Stonemight Woodhelven has had no need of such knowledge. From Graveller to Graveller the Stonemight has been handed down, and with it we made
The sun sent sweat trickling through Covenant's beard, down the middle of his back. His bonds cut off the circulation in his arms, tugged pain into his shoulders. He had to swallow several times to clear his throat. “What is it? The Stonemight?”
His question reached her. He saw at once that she could not refuse to talk about the Stonemight. A nausea of love or lust came into her face. She lowered her knife; her eyes lost their focus on him. “Stonemight,” she breathed ardently. “Ah, the Stonemight.” Her breasts tightened under her green robe as if she were remembering rapture. “It is power and glory, wealth and comfort. A stone of dearest emerald, alight with possibility and cold beyond the touch of any stone. That such might is contained in so small and lovely a periapt! For the Stonemight is no larger than my palm. It is flat, and sharp of edge, like a flake stricken from a larger stone. And it is admirable beyond price.”
She went on, unable to rein the rush of her entrancement. But Covenant lost her words in a flash of intuitive horror. Suddenly he was certain that the talisman she described was a fragment of the Illearth Stone.
That conviction blazed through him like appalled lightning. It explained so many things: the ruined condition of this region; the easiness of the Woodhelven's life; the gratuitous violence of the people; the Graveller's obsession. For the Illearth Stone was the very essence of corruption, a bane so malignant that he had been willing to sacrifice Foamfollower's life as well as his own in order to extirpate that evil from the Land. For a moment of dismay, he believed he had failed to destroy the Stone, that the Illearth Stone itself was the source of the Sunbane.
But then another explanation occurred to him. At one time, the Despiser had given each of his Ravers a piece of the Stone. One of these Ravers had marched to do battle against the Lords, and had been met here, at the southwest corner of Andelain-met and held for several days. Perhaps in that conflict a flake of the Raver's Stone had fallen undetected among the hills, and had remained there, exerting its spontaneous desecration, until some unhappy Woodhelvennin had stumbled across it.
But that did not matter now. A Rider had taken the Stonemight. To Revelstone. Suddenly, Covenant knew that he had to live, had to reach Revelstone. To complete the destruction of the Illearth Stone. So that his past pain and Foamfollower's death would not have been for nothing.
The Graveller was sobbing avidly, “May they rot!” She clenched the haft of her knife like a spike. “Be damned to interminable torment for bereaving me! I curse them from the depths of my heart and the abyss of my anguish!” She jerked the knife above her head. The blade glinted keen and evil in the desert sun. She had lost all awareness of Covenant; her gaze was bent inward on a savage vision of the Clave. “I will slay you all!”
Covenant's shout tore his throat. In horror and desperation, he yelled, “
The Graveller paid no heed. With the whole force of her body, she drove her knife at his chest.
But Vain moved. While the blade arced through its swing, he shrugged his arms free of the bindings.
He was too far away, too late-
From a distance of twenty paces, he closed his fist.
Her arms froze in mid-plunge. The knife tip strained at the centre of Covenant's shirt; but she could not complete the blow.
He watched wildly as Vain approached the Graveller. With the back of his hand, Vain struck her. She crumpled. Blood burst from her mouth. As it ran, she twitched once, then lay still.
Vain ignored her. He gestured at the post, and the wood sprang into splinters. Covenant fell; but Vain caught him, set him on his feet.
Covenant allowed himself no time to think. Shedding splinters and vines, he picked up the knife, thrust it into his belt. His arms felt ferocious with the return of circulation. His heart laboured acutely. But he forced himself forward. He knew that if he did not keep moving he would collapse in an outrage of reaction. He strode among the paralyzed Woodhelvennin back into the village, and entered the first large house he reached.
His eyes took a moment to pierce the dimness. Then he made out the interior of the room. The things he sought hung on the walls: a woven-vine sack of bread, a leather pouch containing some kind of liquid. He had taken them before he noticed a woman sitting in one of the corners. She held herself small and still in an effort to protect the baby sucking at her breast. He unstopped the pouch and swallowed deeply. The liquid had a cloying taste, but it washed some of the gall from his throat. Roughly, he addressed the woman. “What is it?”
In a tiny voice, she answered, “
“Good.” He went to the door, then halted to rasp at her, “Listen to me. This world's going to change. Not just here-not just because you lost your bloody Stonemight. The whole Land is going to be different. You've got to learn to live like human beings. Without all this sick killing.”
As he left the house, the baby started crying.
Fourteen: Pursuit
HE moved brusquely among the stupefied Woodhelvennin. The baby's crying was like a spur in the air; the
