The Wounded Land

fixed on the blaze, as if she were a complete stranger.

He could not bear it. He had invested so much hope in her and knew so little about her; he had to know why she was so afraid. But he had no idea how to confront her. Her hidden wound made her untouchable. So for his own sake, as well as for the sake of his companions, he cleared his throat and began to tell his tale.

He left nothing out. From Andelain and the Dead to Stonemight Woodhelven, from Vain's violence to Bamako's rhysh, from his run across the Centre Plains to Memla's revelation of the Clave's mendacity, he told it all. And then he described the soothtell as fully as he could. His hands would not remain still as he spoke; so much of the memory made him writhe. He tugged at his beard, knitted his fingers together, clutched his left fist over his wedding band, and told his friends what he had witnessed.

He understood now why the Raver had been willing to let him see the truth of the Land's history. Lord Foul wanted him to perceive the fetters of action and consequence which bound him to his guilt, wanted him to blame himself for the destruction of the Staff, and for the Sunbane, and for every life the Clave sacrificed. So that he would founder in culpability, surrender his ring in despair and self-abhorrence. Lord Foul, who laughed at lepers. At the last there will be but one choice for you. In that context, the venom in him made sense. It gave him power he could not control. Power to kill people. Guilt. It was a prophecy of his doom-a self- fulfilling prophecy.

That, too, he explained, hoping Linden would raise her eyes, look at him, try to understand. But she did not. Her mouth stretched into severity; but she held to her isolation. Even when he detailed how the seeds planted by his Dead had led him to conceive a quest for the One Tree, intending to make a new Staff of Law so that thereby he could oppose Lord Foul and contest the Sunbane without self-abandonment, even then she did not respond. Finally, he fell silent, bereft of words.

For a time, the company remained still with him. No one asked any questions; they seemed unwilling to probe the pain he had undergone. But then Sunder spoke. To answer Covenant, he told what had happened to Linden, Hollian, and him after Covenant had entered Andelain.

He described Santonin and the Stonemight, described the Rider's coercion, described the way in which he and Hollian had striven to convince Gibbon that Covenant was lost or dead. But after that, he had not much to tell. He had been cast into a cell with little food and water, and less hope. Hollian's plight had been the same. Both had heard the clamour of Covenant's first entrance into the hold, and nothing more.

Then Covenant thought that surely Linden would speak. Surely she would complete her part of the tale. But she did not. She hid her face against her knees and sat huddled there as if she were bracing herself against a memory full of whips.

“Linden.” How could he leave her alone? He needed the truth from her. “Now you know how Kevin must have felt.”

Kevin Landwaster, last of Berek's line. Linden had said, I don't believe in evil. Kevin also had tried not to believe in evil. He had unwittingly betrayed the Land by failing to perceive Lord Foul's true nature in time, and had thereby set the Despiser on the path to victory. Thus he had fallen into despair. Because of what he had done, he had challenged the Despiser to the Ritual of Desecration, hoping to destroy Lord Foul by reaving the Land. But in that, too, he had failed. He had succeeded at laying waste the Land he loved, and at losing the Staff of Law; but Lord Foul had endured.

All this Covenant told her. “Don't you see?” he said, imploring her to hear him. “Despair is no answer. It's what Foul lives on. Whatever happened to you, it doesn't have to be like this.” Linden, listen to me!

But she did not listen, gave no sign that she was able to hear him. If he had not seen the shadows of distress shifting behind her eyes, he might have believed that she had fallen back into the coma which Gibbon had levied upon her.

Sunder sat glowering as if he could not choose between his empathy for Linden and his understanding of Covenant. Hollian's dark eyes were blurred with tears. Brinn and Cail watched as if they were the models for Vain's impassivity. None of them offered Covenant any help.

He tried a different tack. “Look at Vain.” Linden! “Tell me what you see.”

She did not respond.

“I don't know whether or not I can trust him. I don't have your eyes. I need you to tell me what he is.”

She did not move. But her shoulders tautened as if she were screaming within herself.

“That old man.” His voice was choked by need and fear. “On Haven Farm. You saved his life. He told you to Be true.”

She flinched. Jerking up her head, she gaped at him with eyes as injured as if they had been gouged into the clenched misery of her soul. Then she was on her feet, fuming like a magma of bitterness. “You! ” she cried. “You keep talking about desecration. This is your doing. Why did you have to sell yourself for Joan? Why did you have to get us into this? Don't you call that desecration?”

“Linden.” Her passion swept him upright; but he could not reach out to her. The fire lay between them as if she had lit it there in her fury.

“Of course you don't. You can't see. You don't know” Her hands clawed the air over her breasts as if she wanted to tear her flesh. “You think it will help if you go charging off on some crazy quest. Make a new Staff of Law.” She was savage with gall. “You don't count, and you don't even know it!”

He repeated her name. Sunder and Hollian had risen to their feet. Memla held her rukh ready, and Cail stood poised nearby, as if both Rider and Haruchai felt violence in the air.

“What did he do to you?” What did that bastard do to you?

“He said you don't count!” Abruptly, she was spouting words, hurling them at him as if he were the cause of her distress. “All they care about is your ring. The rest is me. He said, 'You have been especially chosen for this desecration. You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth.'” Her voice thickened like blood around the memory, “Because I can see. That's how they're going to make me do what they want. By torturing me with what I see, and feel, and hear. You're making me do exactly what they want!”

The next instant, her outburst sprang to a halt. Her hands leaped to her face, trying to block out visions. Her body went rigid, as if she were on the verge of convulsions; a moan tore its way between her teeth. Then she sagged.

In desolation, she whispered, “He touched me.”

Touched-?

“Covenant.” She dropped her hands, let him see the full anguish in her visage. “You've got to get me out of here. Back to where I belong. Where my life means something. Before they make me kill you.”

“I know,” he said, because she had to have an answer. “That's another reason why I want to find the One Tree.” But within himself he felt suddenly crippled. You don't count. He had placed so much hope in her, in the possibility that she was free of Lord Foul's manipulations; and now that hope lay in wreckage. “The Lords used the Staff to call me here.” In one stroke, he had been reft of everything. “A Staff is the only thing I know of that can send us back.” Everything except the krill, and his old intransigence.

Especially chosen — Hell and blood! He wanted to cover his face; he could have wept like a child. But Linden's eyes clung to him desperately, trying to believe in him. Sunder and Hollian held each other against a fear they could not name. And Memla's countenance was blunt-moulded into a shape of sympathy, as if she knew what it meant to be discounted. Only the Haruchai appeared unmoved-the Haruchai, and Vain.

When Linden asked, “Your ring?” he met her squarely.

“I can't control it.”

Abruptly, Memla's expression became a flinch of surprise, as if he had uttered something appalling.

He ignored her. While his heart raged for grief, as if tears were a debt which he owed to his mortality and could not pay, he stretched out his arms. There in front of all his companions he gave himself a VSE.

Ah, you are stubborn yet.

Yes. By God. Stubborn.

Acting with characteristic detached consideration, Brinn handed Covenant a pouch of metheglin. Covenant lifted it between himself and his friends, so that they could not see