The Wounded Land

the darkness of his fear and strangulation. It seemed impossible that he could so grit his teeth without tearing the ligatures of his jaw. But he did not answer. Sweat seemed to burst from his pores like bone marrow squeezed through his skin. Yet his rictus held.

A frown of displeasure incused the Raver's forehead. “You will speak to me,” he soughed. “I will tear words from your soul, if need be.” His hand clinched the Stonemight as if he were covetous to use all its power. “Where is Thomas Covenant?”

“Dead.” Whimpers contorted Hollian's voice. Linden felt the lie in the core of her helplessness. “Lost.”

The Raver did not glance away from Sunder, did not release his garrotte. “How so?”

“In Andelain,” the eh-Brand panted. “He entered. We awaited him. He did not return.” To complete her he, she moaned, “Forgive me, Sunder.”

“And the white ring?”

“I know not. Lost. He did not return.”

Still the Raver gave no look or answer to Hollian. But he eased slightly his grasp on the Graveller. “Your refusal,” he breathed, “says to me that Thomas Covenant lives. If he is lost, why do you wish me to believe that he lives?”

Within the scraps of herself, Linden begged Sunder to support Hollian's lie, for his own sake as well as for Covenant's.

Slowly, the Graveller unlocked his jaw. Clarity moved behind the dullness of his eyes. Terribly through his knotted throat, he grated, “I wish you to fear.”

A faint smile like a promise of murder touched the Raver's lips. But, as with Santonin, the certainty of his purpose restrained him. To the Rider, he said, “Convey them to the hold.” Linden could not see whether he believed Hollian's lie. She could descry nothing but the loud wrong of the Raver's purpose.

With a few words, Santonin returned the Stonedownors to Linden's condition. Walking like wooden articulations of his will, his captives followed him dumbly out of the stone pit.

Again, they traversed halls which had no meaning, crossed thresholds that seemed to appear only to be forgotten. Soon they entered a cavern lined into the distance on both sides with iron doors. Small barred windows in the doors exposed each cell, but Linden was incapable of looking for any glimpse of other prisoners. Santonin locked away first Sunder, then Hollian. Farther down the row of doors, he sent Linden herself into a cell.

She stood, helpless and soul-naked, beside a rank straw pallet while he studied her as if he were considering the cost of his desires. Without warning, he quenched his rukh. His will vanished from her mind, leaving her too empty to hold herself upright. As she crumpled to the pallet, she heard him chuckling softly. Then the door clanged shut and bolts rasped into place. She was left alone in her cell as if it contained nothing except the louse-ridden pallet and the blank stone of the walls.

She huddled foetally on the straw, while time passed over her like the indifference of Revelstone's granite. She was a cracked gourd and could not refill herself. She was afraid to make the attempt, afraid even to think of making any attempt. Horror had burrowed into her soul. She desired nothing but silence and darkness, the peace of oblivion. But she could not achieve it. Caught in the limbo between revulsion and death, she crouched among her emptinesses, and waited for the contradictions of her dilemma to tear her apart.

Guards came and went, bringing her unsavoury food and stale water; but she could not muster enough of herself to notice them. She was deaf to the clashing of iron which marked the movements of the guards, the arrival or departure of prisoners. Iron meant nothing. There were no voices. She would have listened to voices. Her mind groped numbly for some image to preserve her sanity, some name or answer to reinvoke the identity she had lost. But she lost all names, all images. The cell held no answers.

Then there was a voice, a shout as if a prisoner had broken free. She heard it through her stupor, clung to it. Fighting the cramps of motionlessness, the rigidity of hunger and thirst, she crawled like a cripple toward the door.

Someone spoke in a flat tone. A voice unlike any she had heard before. She was so grateful for it that at first she hardly caught the words. She was clawing herself up toward the bars of her window when the words themselves penetrated her.

“Ur-Lord Thomas Covenant,” the voice was saying. “Unbeliever and white gold wielder, I salute you. You are remembered among the Haruchai,” The speaker was inflexible, denying his own need. “I am Brinn. Will you set us free?”

Covenant! She would have screamed the name, but her throat was too dry even to whisper.

The next instant, she heard the impact of iron on flesh. Covenant! A body slumped to the stone. Guards moved around it. Hauling herself to the window, she crushed her face against the bars and tried to see; but no one entered her range of vision. A moment later, feet made heavy by a burden moved out of the hold, leaving her lorn under a cairn of silence.

She wanted to sob; but even that was an improvement for her. She had been given a name to fill her emptiness. Covenant. Helplessness and hope. Covenant was still alive. He was here. He could save her. He did not know that she needed saving.

For a time which seemed long and full of anguish, she slumped against the door while her chest shook with dry sobs and her heart clung to the image of Thomas Covenant. He had smiled for Joan. He was vulnerable to everything, and yet he appeared indomitable. Surely the guards had not killed him?

Perhaps they had. Perhaps they had not. His name itself was hope to her. It gave her something to be, restored pieces of who she was. When exhaustion etiolated her sobbing, she crept to her water-bowl, drank it dry, then ate as much, of the rancid food as she could stomach. Afterward, she slept for a while.

But the next iron clanging yanked her awake. The bolts of her door were thrown back. Her heart yammered as she rolled from the pallet and lurched desperately to her feet. Covenant-?

Her door opened. The Raver entered her cell,

He seemed to have no features, no hands; wherever his robe bared his flesh, such potent emanations of ill lanced from him that she could not register his physical being. Wrong scorched the air between them, thrusting her back against the wall. He reeked of Marid, of the malice of bees. Of Joan. His breath filled the cell with gangrene and nausea. When he spoke, his voice seemed to rot in her ears.

“So it appears that your companions lied. I am astonished. I had thought all the people of the Land to be cravens and children. But no matter. The destruction of cravens and children is small pleasure. I prefer the folly of courage in my victims. Fortunately, the Unbeliever”- he sneered the name — “will not attempt your redemption. He is unwitting of your plight.”

She tried to squeeze herself into the stone, strove to escape through bluff granite. But her body, mortal and useless, trapped her in the Raver's stare. She could not shut her eyes to him. He burned along her nerves, etching himself into her, demeaning her soul with the intaglio of his ill.

“But he also,” continued the Raver in a tone like stagnant water, 'is no great matter. Only his ring signifies. He will have no choice but to surrender it. Already he has sold himself, and no power under the Arch of Tune can prevent his despair.

“No, Linden Avery,” the Raver said without a pause. “Abandon all hope of Thomas Covenant. The principal doom of the Land is upon your shoulders.”

No! She had no defence against so much corruption. Night crowded around her, more cruel than any darkness-night as old as the pain of children, parents who sought to die. Never!

“You have been especially chosen for this desecration. You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth.” His voice violated all her flesh. 'You have been chosen, Linden Avery, because you can see. Because you are open to that which no other in the Land can discern, you are open to be forged. Through eyes and ears and touch, you are made to be what the Despiser requires. Descrying destruction, you will be driven to commit all destruction. I will relish that rain.

“Therefore I have forewarned you. So that you will know your peril, and be unable to evade it. So that as you strive to evade it, the Despiser may laugh in scorn and triumph.”

No. It was not possible. She was a doctor; she could not be forced to destroy. No power, no cunning, no malevolence, could unmake who she chose to be. Never! A rush of words surged up in her, burst from her as if she were babbling.

“You're sick. This is all sickness. It's just disease. You have some disease that rots your mind. Physiological insanity. A chemical imbalance of the brain. You don't know what you're saying. I don't believe in