The Wounded Land

glee when that woman announced her intention to slay her captives the next morning.

Then Linden and the Stonedownors were impelled into a rude hut on stilts, and left to face death as best they could. She could not resist. She had reached a crisis of self-protection. This close to the Stonemight, she was always aware of it. Its emanations leeched at her heart, sucked her toward dissolution. Rocking against the wall to remind herself that she still existed, still possessed a separate physical identity, she repeated, No, never again. She iterated the words as if they were a litany against evil, and fought for preservation.

She needed an answer to Joan, to venom and Ravers, to the innominate power of the Stonemight. But the only answer she found was to huddle within herself and close her mind as if she were one of her parents, helpless to meet life, avid for death.

Yet when dawn came, the door of the hut was flung open, not by the Graveller or any of the Woodhelvennin, but by a Rider of the Clave. The fertile sun vivified his stark red robe, etched the outlines of his black rukh, made the stiff thrust of his beard look like a grave digger's spade. He was tall with authority and unshakably confident. “Come,” he said as if disobedience were impossible. “I am Santonin na- Mhoram-in. You are mine.” To Sunder's glower and Hollian's groan, he replied with a smile like the blade of a scimitar.

Outside, the Woodhelvennin stood moaning and pleading. The Graveller protested abjectly. But Santonin compelled her. Weeping, she surrendered her Stonemight. Another man delivered to him the Stonedownors' Sunstone, Iianar, knives.

Watching the transaction, Linden was unable to think anything except that Covenant would return from Andelain soon, and his companions would be gone. For one mad instant, Santonin's smile almost drew her to confess Covenant's existence; she wanted to keep him from falling into the hands of Stonemight Woodhelven. But Sunder and Hollian were silent; and their silence reminded her that the Clave desired Covenant's death. With the remnants of her will, she swallowed everything which might betray nun.

After that, her will was taken from her altogether. Under the green doom of the sun, Santonin na-Mhoram-in ignited his rukh. Coercion sprang from the blaze, seized possession of her soul. All choice left her. At his word, she mounted Santonin's Courser. The shred of her which remained watched Sunder and Hollian as they also obeyed. Then Santonin took them away from Stonemight Woodhelven. Away toward Revelstone.

His geas could not be broken. She contained nothing with which she might have resisted it. For days, she knew that she should attempt to escape, to fight. But she lacked the simple volition to lift her hands to her face or push her hair out of her eyes without Santonin's explicit instructions. Whenever he looked into her dumb gaze, he smiled as if her imposed docility pleased him, At times, he murmured names that meant nothing to her, as if he were mocking her: Windscour, Victuallin Tayne, Andelainscion. And yet he did not appear to be corrupt. Or she was not capable of perceiving his corruption.

Only once did his mastery fail. Shortly after sunrise on the first day of a desert sun, eight days after their departure from Stonemight Woodhelven, a silent shout unexpectedly thrilled the air, thrilled Linden's heart. Santonin's hold snapped like an overtight harpstring.

As if they had been straining at the leash for this moment, Sunder and Hollian grappled for the rukh. Linden clamped an arm-lock on Santonin, flung him to the ground, then broke away south-eastward in the direction of the shout.

But a moment later, she found herself wandering almost aimlessly back to Santonin's camp. Sunder and Hollian were packing the Rider's supplies. Santonin wore a fierce grin. The triangle of his rukh shone like blood and emerald. Soon he took his captives on toward Revelstone, as if nothing had happened.

Nothing had happened. Linden knew nothing, understood nothing, chose nothing. The Rider could have abused her in any way he desired. She might have felt nothing if he had elected to exercise a desire. But he did not. He seemed to have a clear sense of his own purpose. Only the anticipation in his eyes showed that his purpose was not kind.

After days of emptiness, Linden would have been glad for any purpose which could restore her to herself. Any purpose at all. Thomas Covenant had ceased to exist in her thoughts. Perhaps he had ceased to exist entirely. Perhaps he had never existed. Nothing was certain except that she needed Santonin's instructions in order to put food in her mouth.

Even the sight of Revelstone itself, the Keep of the na-Mhoram rising from the high jungle of a second fertile sun like a great stone ship, could not rouse her spirit. She was only distantly aware of what she was seeing. The gates opened to admit the Rider, closed behind his Courser, and meant nothing.

Santonin na-Mhoram-in was met by three or four other figures like himself; but they greeted him with respect, as if he had stature among them. They spoke to him, words which Linden could not understand. Then he commanded his prisoners to dismount.

Linden, Sunder, and Hollian obeyed in an immense, ill-lit hall. With Santonin striding before them, they walked the ways of the great Keep. Passages and chambers, stairs and junctions, passed unmarked, unremembered. Linden moved like a hollow vessel, unable to hold any impression of the ancient gut-rock. Santonin's path had no duration and no significance.

Yet his purpose remained. He brought his captives to a huge chamber like a pit in the floor of Revelstone. Its sloping sides were blurred and blunt, as if a former gallery or arena had been washed with lava. At its bottom stood a man in a deep ebony robe and a chasuble of crimson. He gripped a tall iron crozier topped with an open triangle. His hood was thrown back, exposing features which were also blurred and blunt in the torchlight.

His presence pierced Linden's remaining scrap of identity like a hot blade. Behind her passivity, she began to wail.

He was a Raver.

“Three fools,” he said in a voice like cold scoria. “I had hoped for four.”

Santonin and the Raver spoke together in alien, empty words. Santonin produced the Stonemight and handed it to the Raver. Emerald reflected in the Raver's eyes; an eloquent smile shaped the flesh of his lips. He closed his fist on the green chip, so that it plumed lush ferns of force. Linden's wail died of starvation in the poverty of her being.

Then the Rider stepped to one side, and the Raver faced the captives. His visage was a smear of ill across Linden's sight. He gazed at her directly, searched out the vestiges of her self, measured them, scorned them. “You I must not harm,” he said dully, almost regretfully. “Unharmed, you will commit all harm I could desire.” His eyes left her as if she were too paltry to merit further notice. “But these treachers are another matter.” He confronted Sunder and Hollian. “It signifies nothing if they are broken before they are shed.”

He held the Stonemight against his chest. Its steam curled up his face. Nostrils dilating, he breathed the steam as if it were a rare narcotic. “Where is Thomas Covenant?”

The Stonedownors did not react, could not react. Linden stood where she had been left, like a disregarded puppet. But her heart contracted in sudden terror.

The Raver made a slight gesture. Santonin muttered softly over his rukh. Abruptly, the geas holding Sunder and Hollian ended. They stumbled as if they had forgotten how to manage their limbs and jerked trembling erect. Fear glazed Sunder's eyes, as if he were beholding the dreadful font and master of his existence. Hollian covered her face like a frightened child.

“Where is Thomas Covenant?”

Animated by an impulse more deeply inbred than choice or reason, the Stonedownors struggled into motion and tried to flee.

The Raver let Hollian go. But with the Stonemight he put out a hand of force which caught Sunder by the neck. Hot emerald gripped him like a garrotte, snatched him to his knees.

Reft of her companion, Hollian stopped and swung around to face the Raver. Her raven hair spread about her head like wings.

The Raver knotted green ill at Sunder's throat. “Where is Thomas Covenant?”

Sunder's eyes were blind with fear and compulsion. They bulged in their sockets. But he did not answer. Locking his jaws, he held himself still.

The Raver's fingers tightened. “Speak.”

The muscles of Sunder's jaw pulled together, clenched as if he were trying to break his teeth, grind his voice into silence forever. As the force at his throat grew stronger, those muscles became distinct, rigid, etched against