the natural puissance of the world had flowed close to the surface here; and the Land’s inward loveliness had been tangible to everyone who gazed upon it. But the Sunbane had tainted that elemental grace; had twisted it to desert and rain, pestilence and fertility. As a result, Linden had only grasped the true worth of the
Land when she had at last visited Andelain.
There, in the final bastion of Law against the Sunbane, she had seen and felt and tasted the real wealth of Earthpower, the anodyne and solace of the Land’s essential largesse. Her preternatural discernment had made its health and abundance palpable to her senses.
Inspired by Andelain and Covenant, she had striven with all her love and compassion to remake the Land as it had been before Lord Foul had launched his attack on its nature.
Three and a half
And the prophetic figure who should have warned her of her peril had given her nothing. He had denied her any chance to protect her son.
Dear God, how bad was it this time? What had Lord Foul
What was he doing to Jeremiah right now?
That thought stung her; galvanised her.
In her own world, she was dead, or dying. Her life there was gone, stamped out by a leaden slug. She had failed all of her promises.
Here, however, she remained somehow among the living, just as Covenant had remained after his murder in the woods behind Haven Farm. And while she retained any vestige of herself, only Jeremiah mattered to her.
He, too, had survived: here at least, if not in his former existence.
As long as she could still breathe and think and strive, she would not,
Yet she did not leap to her feet. Already she knew that any attempt to rescue Jeremiah might well require months. She could not simply descend from Kevin’s Watch and step to his side. The place where Lord Foul had secreted her son could be hundreds of leagues distant. Hell, she might need days simply to gain an understanding of her own circumstances-and the Land’s.
She had seen herself rouse the Worm of the World’s End. She had witnessed monstrous creatures devouring the ground as though they fed on life and Earthpower.
And this time she was alone. Entirely alone. She did not even know whether the village of Mithil Stonedown, where she and Covenant had found Sunder to aid them, still existed. She had no supplies or maps; no means of travel except her untrained legs.
All she had was power: Covenant’s white gold ring,
Lord Foul had prepared her well to understand despair.
Nevertheless her alarm for Jeremiah had restored her to herself; and she recognised that she had one other resource as well. During her fall from her own life, she had tasted her former health-sense. Now she felt it fully: it sang in her nerves, as discerning and keen as augury. It told her of the cleanliness of the sunshine; of its untrammeled, life-giving warmth. It described to her senses the high purity of the air and the breeze, the sky, the heavens. It made her aware of the bold reach of the mountains behind her, ancient and enduring, although she had not glanced toward them.
And it warned her-
Involuntarily she flinched; jerked herself onto the support of her hands and knees. Had she misunderstood the sensation? No, it was there, in the stone: a suggestion of weakness, of frailty; a visceral tremor among the old bones of the spire. The platform did not literally move or quiver. Still the message was unmistakable.
Something threatened Kevin’s Watch. It had been strained to the breaking point. Any new stress might cause it to collapse-
– dropping her a thousand feet and more to the hard hills.
Panic flared briefly through her, and she nearly sprang erect. But then her percipience gained clarity, and she saw that the danger was not imminent. She could not imagine what manner of force had done the Watch so much harm, when it had withstood every assault of weather, earthquake, and magic since at least the time of High Lord Kevin Landwaster, a thousand years before Covenant’s first appearance here. However, no such power impinged upon it now.
Kevin’s Watch would stand awhile longer.
Breathing deeply, Linden Avery closed her eyes and at last turned her discernment on herself.
She had been shot. She had felt the shock in her chest, the irreversible rupture that had severed her link to the life that she had chosen for herself.
Yet she was not in pain now. Probing gingerly inward, her reborn senses descried no damage. Her heart beat too rapidly, spurred by Jeremiah’s plight and her own fear; but it remained whole. Her lungs sucked in the clean air without difficulty, and her ribs flexed with each breath, as if they had not been touched by frantic lead.
Anxiously she opened her eyes and looked down at her shirt.
A neat round hole had been punched through the red flannel directly below her sternum. Yet the fabric at the rim of the hole showed no blood. Even that sign that she had been slain had been burned away.
When she unbuttoned her shirt, however, to study the skin between her breasts, she found a round white scar in the V where her ribs came together. Covenant’s ring hung on its thin chain only an inch or two above the newly healed flesh.
Undoubtedly there was another scar in the centre of her back, a larger and more ragged wound, impossibly repaired. And her palm had been made whole as well.
Moments or hours ago, in the darkness of Joan’s mind, she had felt power flare through her; the argence of white gold. Had she healed herself? Covenant had once done something similar. He had borne the scar of a knife throughout his remaining time in the Land.
Such healing violated every precept of her medical training. Nevertheless it was natural here. Wild magic and Earthpower worked such wonders. She had experienced them at Covenant’s side too often to doubt them.
Still her former life was gone; irretrievable. She would never see Berenford Memorial again, or her patients, or her friends. She would never know whether Sandy and Sheriff Lytton had survived-
But she could not afford such griefs. Lord Foul had taken Jeremiah. She had lost something more precious to her than her own life.
Her healed scars gave her courage. When she had rebuttoned her shirt, she climbed slowly upright.
She knew what she would see; and at first the scene which greeted her was just as she remembered it. The circle of stone and its parapet had been smoothed from the native granite of the mountains; and its spire leaned northward, toward Andelain. The sun, nearly overhead and slightly to her left in the southern expanse of the sky, suggested that she had arrived in late morning, despite the violent darkness which she had left behind. Confirming her other senses, the light showed her immediately that there was no flaw upon the sun; that no vestige or reminder of the Sunbane remained.
In this one way, if in no other, she resembled Thomas Covenant. She had not failed the Land.
Turning slowly with the sun’s health on her face, she saw the familiar mountains rearing up over the spire to the south. Here, she recalled, the Southron Range jutted some distance northward, forming a wedge of peaks that ended at Kevin’s Watch and the north-lying hills. From among those peaks to the west arose the Mithil River, which then flowed along a widening valley out into the South Plains. But on the other side, the mountains were more strongly fortified. They stretched east and then northeast like a curtain-wall from Kevin’s Watch to Landsdrop, separating the Plains of Ra from the distant south.
Linden had never seen or heard what lay beyond the Southron Range. East of Landsdrop, however, past Lord Foul’s former demesne in Ridjeck Thome, was the Sunbirth Sea. And as the littoral ran northward, the Spoiled Plains lapsed into Lifeswallower, the Great Swamp, which in turn eventually rose from its fens to form the
