The Wounded Land

“Sunder,” he croaked. “Graveler of Mithil Stonedown. Holder of the Sunstone.”

  Incomprehension stretched Sunder’s countenance. “Linden Avery?” he asked falteringly. “What is the name of my father?”

  “Was,” she said in a flat tone. “His name was Nassic son of Jous. He’s dead.”

  Sunder gaped as if Covenant and Linden were miraculous. Then he dropped his hands to his sides. “Heaven and Earth! It is not possible. The Sunbane— Never have I beheld—” He shook his head in astonishment, “Ah, you are a mystery! How can such things be? Does one white ring alter the order of life?”

  “Sometimes,” Covenant muttered. He was trying to follow a fractured sequence of memories. Everything he did was an unintentional assault on the Graveler’s preconceptions. He wanted to ease Sunder with some kind of explanation. The heat haze seemed to blur the distinction between past and present. Something about his boots—? He forced words past his parched lips. “The first time I was here—” Boots—yes, that was it. Drool Rockworm had been able to locate him through the alien touch of his boots on the ground. “My boots. Her shoes. They don’t come from the Land. Maybe that’s what protected us.”

  Sunder grabbed at the suggestion as if it were a benison. “Yes. It must be so. Flesh is flesh, susceptible to the Sunbane. But your footwear—it is unlike any I have seen. Surely you were shielded at the sun’s first touch, else you would have been altered beyond any power to know me.” Then his face darkened, “But could you not have told me? I feared—” The clenching of his jaws described eloquently the extremity of his fear.

  “We didn’t know.” Covenant wanted to lie down, close his eyes, forget. “We were lucky.” A moment passed before he found the will to ask, “Marid—?”

  At once, Sunder put everything else aside. He went to look at the stakes, the holes. A frown knotted his forehead. “Fools,” he grated. “I warned them to ware such things. None can foretell the Sunbane. Now there is evil upon the Plains.”

  “You mean,” asked Linden, “he didn’t escape? He isn’t safe?”

  In response, the Graveler rasped, “Did I not say there was not time? You have achieved nothing but your own prostration. It is enough,” he went on stiffly. “I have followed you to this useless end. Now you will accompany me.”

  Linden stared at Sunder. “Where are we going?”

  “To find shelter,” he said in a calmer tone. “We cannot endure this sun.”

  Covenant gestured eastward, toward a region with which he was familiar. “The hills—”

  Sunder shook his head. “There is shelter in the hills. But to gain it we must pass within scope of Windshorn Stonedown. That is certain sacrifice—for any stranger, as for the Graveler of Mithil Stonedown. We go west, to the Mithil River.”

  Covenant could not argue. Ignorance crippled his ability to make decisions. When Sunder took his arm and turned him away from the sun, he began to scuffle stiffly out of the bowl of dust.

  Linden moved at his side. Her stride was unsteady; she seemed dangerously weak. Sunder was stronger; but his eyes were bleak, as if he could see disaster ahead. And Covenant could barely lift his feet. The sun, still climbing toward midmorning, clung to his shoulders, hag-riding him. Heat flushed back and forth across his skin—a vitiating fever which echoed the haze of the scorched earth. His eyes felt raw from the scraping of his eyelids. After a time, he began to stumble as if the ligatures of his knees were parting.

  Then he was in the dirt, with no idea of how he had fallen. Sunder supported him so that he could sit up. The Graveler’s face was gray with dust; he, too, had begun to suffer. “Thomas Covenant,” he panted, “this is fatal to you. You must have water. Will you not make use of your white ring?”

  Covenant’s respiration was shallow and ragged. He stared into the haze as if he had gone blind.

  “The white ring,” Sunder pleaded. “You must raise water, lest, you die.”

  Water. He pulled the shards of himself together around that thought. Impossible. He could not concentrate. Had never used wild magic for anything except contention. It was not a panacea.

  Both Sunder and Linden were studying him as if he were responsible for their hopes. They were failing along with him. For their sakes, he would have been willing to make the attempt. But it was impossible for other reasons as well. Tortuously as if he had been disjointed, he shifted forward, got his knees under him, then his feet.

  “Ur-Lord!” protested the Graveler.

  “I don’t,” Covenant muttered, hall coughing, “don’t know how.” He wanted to shout. “I’m a leper. I can’t see—can’t feel—” The Earth was closed to him; it lay blank and meaningless under his feet—a concatenation of haze, nothing more. “I don’t know how to reach it.” We need Earthpower. And a Lord to wield it.

  There’s no Earthpower. The Lords are gone. He had no words potent enough to convey his helplessness. “I just can’t.”

  Sunder groaned. But he hesitated only momentarily. Then he sighed in resignation, “Very well. Yet we must have water.” He took out his knife. “My strength is greater than yours. Perhaps I am able to spare a little blood.” Grimly he directed the blade toward the mapwork of scars on his left forearm.

  Covenant lurched to try to stop him.

  Linden was quicker. She seized Sunder’s wrist. “No!”

  The Graveler twisted free of her, gritted acutely, “We must have water.”

  “Not like that.” The cuts on Nassic’s hand burned in Covenant’s memory; he rejected such power instinctively.

  “Do you wish to die?”

  “No.” Covenant upheld himself by force of will. “But I’m not that desperate. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Your knife isn’t even clean,” added Linden. “If septicemia set in, I’d have to burn it out.”

  Sunder closed his eyes as if to shut out what they were saying. “I will outlive you both under this sun.” His jaws chewed his voice into a barren whisper. “Ah, my father, what have you done to me? Is this the outcome of all your mad devoir?”

  “Suit yourself,” Covenant said brutally, trying to keep Sunder from despair or rebellion. “But at least have the decency to wait until we’re too weak to stop you.”

  The Graveler’s eyes burst open. He spat a curse. “Decency, is it?” he grated. “You are swift to cast shame upon people whose lives you do not comprehend. Well, let us hasten the moment when I may decently save you.” With a thrust of his arm, he pushed Covenant into motion, then caught him around the waist to keep him from falling, and began half dragging him westward.

  In a moment, Linden came to Covenant’s other side, shrugged his arm over her shoulders so that she could help support him. Braced in that fashion, he was able to travel.

  But the sun was remorseless. Slowly, ineluctably, it beat him toward abjection. By midmorning, he was hardly carrying a fraction of his own weight. To his burned eyes, the haze sang threnodies of prostration; motes of darkness began to flit across his vision. From time to time, he saw small clumps of night crouching on the pale ground just beyond clarity, as if they were waiting for him.

  Then the earth seemed to rise up in front of him. Sunder came to a halt. Linden almost fell; but Covenant clung to her somehow. He fought to focus his eyes. After a moment, he saw that the rise was a shelf of rock jutting westward.

  Sunder tugged him and Linden forward. They limped past another clump like a low bush, into the shadow of the rock.

  The jut of the shelf formed an eroded lee large enough to shelter several people. In the shadow, the rock and dirt felt cool. Linden helped Sunder place Covenant sitting against the balm of the stone. Covenant tried to lie down; but the Graveler stopped him, and Linden panted, “Don’t. You might go to sleep. You’ve lost too much fluid,”

  He nodded vaguely. The coolness was only relative, and he was febrile with thirst. No amount of shade could answer the unpity of the sun. But the shadow itself was bliss to him, and he was content. Linden sat down on one side of him; Sunder, on the other.
He closed his eyes, let himself drift.

  Some time later, he became conscious of voices. Linden and Sunder were talking. The hebetude of her tone betrayed the difficulty of staying alert. Sunder’s responses were distant, as if he found her inquiries painful but could not think of any way to refuse them.

  “Sunder,” she asked dimly, “what is Mithil Stonedown going to do without you?”

  “Linden Avery?” He seemed not to understand her question.

  “Call me Linden. After today—” Her voice trailed away.

  He hesitated, then said, “Linden.”

  “You’re the Graveler. What will they do without a Graveler?”

  “Ah.” Now he caught her meaning. “I signify little. The loss of the Sunstone is of more import, yet even that loss can be overcome. The Stonedown is chary of its lore. My prentice is adept in all the rites which must be performed in the absence of the Sunstone. Without doubt, he shed Kalina my mother at the sun’s rising. The Stonedown will endure. How otherwise could I have done what I have done?”

  After a pause, she asked, “You’re not married?”

  “No.” His reply was like a wince.

  Linden seemed to hear a wide range of implications in that one word. Quietly she said, “But you were.”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  Sunder was silent at first. But then he replied, “Among my people, only the Graveler is given the choice of his own mate. The survival of the Stonedown depends upon its children. Mating for children is not left to the hazard of affection or preference. But by long custom, the Graveler is given freedom. As recompense for the burden of his work.

  “The choice of my heart fell upon Aimil daughter of Anest. Anest was sister to Kalina my mother. From childhood, Aimil and I were dear to each other. We were gladly wed, and gladly sought to vindicate our choosing with children.

  “A son came to us, and was given the name Nelbrin, which is ‘heart’s child.’ ” His tone was as astringent as the terrain. “He was a pale child, not greatly well. But he grew as a child should grow and was a treasure to us.

  “For a score of turnings of the moon he grew. He was slow in learning to walk, and not steady upon his legs, but he came at last to walk with glee. Until—” He swallowed convulsively. “Until by mischance Aimil my wife injured him in our home. She turned from the hearth bearing a heavy pot, and Nelbrin our son had walked to stand behind her. The pot struck him upon the chest.

  “From that day, he sickened toward death. A dark swelling grew in him, and his life faltered.”

  “Hemophilia,” Linden breathed almost inaudibly. “Poor kid.”

  Sunder did not stop. “When his death was written upon his face for all to see, the Stonedown invoked judgment. I was commanded to sacrifice him for the good of the people.”

  A rot gnawed at Covenant’s guts. He looked up at the Graveler. The dryness in his throat felt like slow strangulation. He seemed to hear the ground sizzling.

  In protest, Linden asked, “Your own son? What did you do?”

  Sunder stared out into the Sunbane as if it were the story of his life. “I could not halt his death. The desert sun and the sun of pestilence had left us sorely in need. I shed his life to raise water and food for the Stonedown.”

  Oh, Sunder! Covenant groaned.

  Tightly Linden demanded, “How did Aimil feel about that?”

  “It maddened her. She fought to prevent me—and when she could not, she became wild in her mind. Despair afflicted her, and she—” For a moment, Sunder could not summon the words he needed. Then he went on harshly, “She committed a mortal harm against herself. So that her death would not be altogether meaningless, I shed her also.”

  So that her— Hellfire! Covenant understood now why the thought of killing his mother had driven Sunder to abandon his home. How many loved ones could a man bear to kill?

  Grimly Linden said, “It wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to do.” Passion gathered in her tone. “It’s this Sunbane.”

  The Graveler did not look at her. “All men and women die. It signifies nothing to complain.” He sounded as sun-tormented as the Plains. “What else do you desire to know of me? You need only ask. I have no secrets from you.”

  Covenant ached to comfort Sunder; but he knew nothing about comfort. Anger and defiance were the only answers he understood. Because he could not ease the Stonedownor, he tried to distract him. “Tell me about Nassic.” The words were rough in his mouth. “How did he come to have a son?”

  Linden glared at Covenant as if she were vexed by his insensitivity; but Sunder relaxed visibly. He seemed relieved by the question—glad to escape the futility of his mourning. “Nassic my father,” he said, with a weariness which served as calm, “was like Jous his father, and like Prassan his father’s father. He was a man of Mithil Stonedown.

  “Jous his father lived in the place he named his temple, and from time to time Nassic visited Jous, out of respect for his father, and also to ascertain that no harm had befallen him. The Stonedown wed Nassic to Kalina, and they were together as any young man and woman. But then Jous fell toward his death. Nassic went to the temple to bear his father to Mithil Stonedown for sacrifice. He did not return. Dying, Jous placed his hands upon Nassic, and the madness or prophecy of the father passed into the son. Thus Nassic was lost to the Stonedown.

  “This loss was sore to Kalina my mother. She was ill content with just one son. Many a time, she went to the temple, to give her love to my father and to plead for his. Always she returned weeping and barren. I fear—” He paused sadly. “I fear she hurled herself at Marid hoping to die.”

  Gradually Covenant’s attention drifted. He was too weak to concentrate. Dimly he noted the shifting angle of the sun. Noon had come, laying sunlight within inches of his feet. By midafternoon, the shade would be gone. By midafternoon—

  He could not survive much more of the sun’s direct weight.

  The dark clump which he had passed near the shelf was still there. Apparently it was not a mirage. He blinked at it, trying to make out details. If not a mirage, then what? A bush? What kind of bush could endure this sun, when every other form of life had been burned away?

  The question raised echoes in his memory, but he could not hear them clearly. Exhaustion and thirst deafened his mind.

  “Die?”

  He was hardly aware that he had spoken aloud. His voice felt like sand rubbing against stone. What kind—? He strove to focus his eyes. “That bush.” He nodded weakly toward the patch of darkness. “What is it?”

  Sunder squinted. “It is aliantha. Such bushes may be found in any place, but they are most common near the River. In some way, they defy the Sunbane.” He dismissed the subject. “They are a most deadly poison.”

  “Poison?” Pain sliced Covenant’s lips; the vehemence of his outcry split them. Blood began to run through the dust like a trail of fury cleaving his chin. Not aliantha!

  The Graveler reached toward Covenant’s face as if those dirty red drops were precious. Empowered by memories, Covenant struck Sunder’s hand aside. “Poison?” he croaked. In times past, the rare aliment of aliantha had sustained him more often than he could recollect. If they had become poison—! He was abruptly giddy with violence. If they had become poison, then the Land had not simply lost its Earthpower. The Earthpower had been corrupted! He wanted to batter Sunder with his fists. “How do you know?”

  Linden caught at his shoulder. “Covenant!”

  “It is contained in the Rede of the na-Mhoram,” rasped Sunder. “I am a Graveler—it is my work to make use of that knowledge. I know it to be true.”

  No! Covenant grated. “Have you tried it?”

  Sunder gaped at him. “No.”

  “Do you know anybody who ever tried it?”

  “It is poison! No man or woman willingly consumes poison.”

  “Hell and blood.” Bracing himself on the stone, Covenant heaved to his feet. “I don’t believe it. He can’t destroy
the entire Law. If he did, the Land wouldn’t exist anymore.”

  The Graveler sprang erect, gripped Covenant’s arms, shook him fiercely. “It is poison.”

  Mustering all his passion, Covenant responded, “No!”

  Sunder’s visage knurled as if only the clench of his muscles kept him from exploding. With one wrench of his hands, he thrust Covenant to the ground. “You are mad.” His voice was iron and bitterness. “You seduced me from my home, asking my aid—but at every turn you defy me. You must seek for Marid. Madness! You must refuse all safety against the Sunbane. Madness! You must decline to raise water, nor permit me to raise it. Madness! Now nothing will content you but poison.” When Covenant tried to rise, Sunder shoved him back. “It is enough. Make any further attempt toward the aliantha, and I will strike you senseless.”

  Covenant’s gaze raged up at the Graveler; but Sunder did not flinch. Desperation inured him to contradiction; he was trying to reclaim some control over his doom.

  Holding Sunder’s rigid stare, Covenant climbed to his feet, stood swaying before the Graveler. Linden was erect behind Sunder; but Covenant did not look at her. Softly he said, “I do not believe that aliantha is poisonous.” Then he turned, and began to shamble toward the bush.

  A howl burst from Sunder. Covenant tried to dodge; but Sunder crashed into him headlong, carried him sprawling to the dirt. A blow on the back of his head sent lights across his vision like fragments of vertigo.

  Then Sunder fell away. Covenant levered his legs under him, to see Linden standing over the Graveler. She held him in a thumb-lock which pressed him to the ground.

  Covenant stumbled to the bush.

  His head reeled. He fell to his knees. The bush was pale with dust and bore little resemblance to the dark green-and-viridian plant he remembered. But the leaves were holly-like and firm, though few. Three small fruit the size of blueberries clung to the branches in defiance of the Sunbane.

  Trembling he plucked one, wiped the dust away to see the berry’s true color.

  At the edge of his sight, he saw Sunder knock Linden’s feet away, break free of her.