The Wounded Land

his face, and drank it dry. Then he walked away into the darkness around the Gilden, used the night to hide him. After a time, he lay down among the things he had lost, and closed his eyes.

Brinn roused him with the dawn, got him to his feet in time to meet the second rising of the sun of pestilence, protected by his boots. The rest of the quest was already awake. Sunder and Hollian had joined Memla on pieces of stone; the Haruchai were busy preparing food; Linden stood gazing at the approaching incarnadine. Her face was sealed against its own vulnerability; but when she noticed Covenant, her eyes acknowledged him sombrely. After the conflicts of the previous evening, her recognition touched him like a smile.

He found that he felt stronger. But with recovery came a renewal of fear. The na-Mhoram's Grim-

Memla bore herself as if throughout the night she had not forgotten that peril. Her aging features were lined with apprehension, and her hands trembled on her rukh. To answer Covenant's look, she murmured, “Still he raises it, and is not content. It will be a Grim to rend our souls.” For a moment, her eyes winced to his face as if she needed reassurance. But then she jerked away, began snapping at her companions to make them hurry.

Soon the company was on its way, moving at a hard canter down the path which Memla invoked from the Banefire. Her urgency and Covenant's tight dread infected the Stonedownors, marked even Linden. The quest rode in silence, as if they could feel the Grim poised like a blade at the backs of their necks.

The jungle under the sun of pestilence aggravated Covenant's sense of impending disaster. The insects thronged around him like incarnations of disease. Every malformed bough and bush was a-crawl with malformed bugs. Some of the trees were so heavily veined with termites that the wood looked leprous. And the smell of rot had become severe. Under the aegis of the Sunbane, his guts ached, half expecting the vegetation to break open and begin suppurating.

Time dragged. Weakness crept through his muscles again. When the company finally rode into the relief of sunset, his neck and shoulders throbbed from the strain of looking backward for some sign of the Grim. Shivers ran through the marrow of his bones. As soon as Memla picked a camping place under the shelter of a megalithic stand of eucalyptus, he dropped to the ground, hoping to steady himself on the Earth's underlying granite. But his hands and feet were too numb to feel anything.

Around him, his companions dismounted. Almost at once, Linden went over to Hollian. The flesh of Linden's face was pale and taut, stretched tight over her skull. She accosted the eh-Brand purposefully, but then had to fumble for words. “The insects,” she murmured. “The smell. It's worse. Worse than any other sun. I can't shut it all out.” Her eyes watched the way her hands clung together, as if only that knot held her in one piece. “I can't-What's it going to be tomorrow?”

Sunder had moved to stand near Hollian. As Linden fell silent, he nodded grimly. “Never in all my life have I faced a sun of pestilence and encountered so little harm.” His tone was hard. “I had not known the Clave could journey so untouched by that which is fear and abhorrence to the people of the Land. And now ur-Lord Covenant teaches us that the Clave's immunity has been purchased by the increase rather than the decline of the Sunbane.” His voice darkened as if he were remembering all the people he had shed. “I do not misdoubt him. But I, too, desire tidings of the morrow's sun.”

Memla indicated with a shrug that such tidings could not alter her anxiety. But Covenant joined Linden and Sunder. He felt suddenly sickened by the idea that perhaps the soothtell had been a lie designed by Gibbon-Raver to mislead him. If two days of rain were followed by only two days of pestilence-Gripping himself, he waited for Hollian's response.

She acceded easily. Her light smile reminded him that she was not like Sunder. With her Iianar and her skill, she had always been able to touch the Sunbane for the benefit of others; she had never had to kill people to obtain blood. Therefore she did not loathe her own capabilities as Sunder did his.

She stepped a short distance away to give herself space, then took out her dirk and wand. Seating herself on the leaves which littered the ground, she summoned her concentration. Covenant, Linden, and Sunder watched intently as she placed the Iianar on her lap, gripped her dirk in her left hand and directed the point against her right palm. The words of invocation soughed past her lips. They clasped the company like a liturgy of worship for something fatal. Even the Haruchai left their tasks to stand ready. The thought that she was about to cut herself made Covenant scowl; but he had long ago left behind the days when he could have protested what she was doing.

Slowly, she drew a small cut on her palm. As blood welled from the incision, she closed her fingers on the Iianar. Dusk had deepened into night around the quest, concealing her from the watchers. Yet even Covenant's impercipient senses could feel her power thickening like motes of fire concatenating towards flame. For a bated moment, the air was still. Then she sharpened her chant, and the wand took light.

Red flames bloomed like Sunbane orchids. They spread up into the air and down her forearm to the ground. Crimson tendrils curled about her as if she were being overgrown. They seemed bright; but they cast no illumination; the night remained dark.

Intuitively, Covenant understood her fire. With chanting and blood and Iianar, she reached out toward the morrow's sun; and the flames took their colour from what that sun would be. Her fire was the precise hue of the sun's pestilential aura.

A third sun of pestilence. He sighed his relief softly. Here, at least, he had no reason to believe that the soothtell had been false.

But before the eh-Brand could relax her concentration, release her foretelling, the fire abruptly changed.

A streak of blackness as absolute as Vain's skin shot from the wood, scarred the flames with ebony. At first, it was only a lash across the crimson. But it grew, expanded among the flames until it dominated them, obscured them.

Quenched them.

Instantly, night covered the companions, isolating them from each other. Covenant could perceive nothing except a fault tang of smoke in the air, as if Hollian's wand had been in danger of being consumed.

He swore hoarsely under his breath and swung out his arms until he touched Brian on one side, Linden on the other. Then he heard feet spring through the leaves and heard Sunder cry, “Hollian!”

The next moment, Memla also cried out in horror. “Sending!” Fire raged from her rukh, cracked like a flail among the trees, making the night lurid. “It comes!” Covenant saw Ceer standing behind the Rider as if to protect her from attack. The other Haruchai formed a defensive ring around the company.

“Gibbon!” Memla howled. “Abomination!” Her fire savaged the air as ft she were trying to strike at Revelstone from a distance of nearly two score leagues. “By all the Seven Hells-!”

Covenant reacted instinctively. He surged into the range of Memla's fire and gripped her forearms to prevent her from striking at him. “Memla!” he yelled into her face. “Memla! How much time have we got?”

His grip or his demand reached her. Her gaze came into focus on him. With a convulsive shudder, she dropped her fire, let darkness close over the quest. When she spoke, her voice came out of the night like the whispering of condor wings.

'There is time. The Grim cannot instantly cross so many leagues. Perhaps as much as a day remains to us.

“But it is the na-Mhoram's Grim, and has been two days in the raising. Such a sending might break Revelstone itself.”

She took a breath which trembled. “Ur-Lord, we cannot evade this Grim. It will follow my rukh and rend us utterly.” Her voice winced in her throat. “I had believed that the wild magic would give us hope. But if it is beyond your control-”

At Covenant's back, a small flame jumped into life and caught wood. Sunder had lit a faggot. He held it up like a torch, lifting the company out of the dark.