The Wounded Land

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  The heat was tremendous. By midmorning, the ground was bare and turning arid; the horizons had begun to shimmer, collapsing in on Covenant as if the desert sun shrank the world. Now there was nothing to hinder his progress across the waste of the Center Plains—nothing except light as eviscerating as fire, and air which seemed to wrench the moisture from his flesh, and giddy heat waves, and Sunbane.

  He locked his face toward Revelstone, marched as if neither sun nor wilderland had the power to daunt him. But dust and dryness clogged his throat. By noon, he had emptied half his leather pouch. His shirt was dark with sweat. His forehead felt blistered, flushed by chills. The haze affected his balance, so that he stumbled even while his legs were still strong enough to be steady. And his strength did not last; the sun leeched it from him, despite his improvident consumption of bread and metheglin.

  For a time, indecision clouded his mind. His only hope of gaining on Linden lay in traveling day and night without letup. If he acted rationally, journeyed only at night while the desert sun lasted, then the Rider’s Courser would increase the distance between them every day. But he could not endure this pace. The hammer of the Sunbane was beating his endurance thinner and thinner; at confused moments, he felt translucent already.

  When his brain became so giddy that he found himself wondering if he could ask Vain to carry him, he acknowledged his limitations. In a flinch of lucidity, he saw himself clinging to Vain’s shoulders while the Demondim-spawn stood motionless under the sun because Covenant was not moving. Bitterly he turned northeast toward Andelain.

  He knew that the marge of Andelain ran roughly parallel to his direct path toward Revelstone; so in the Hills he would be able to stay near the route the Rider must have taken. Yet Andelain was enough out of his way to gall him. From the Hills he might not be able to catch sight of Linden and her companions, even if by some piece of good fortune the Rider was delayed; and the rumpled terrain of Andelain might slow him. But the choice was not one of speed: not under this sun. In Andelain he might at least reach the Soulsease River alive.

  And perhaps, he thought, trying to encourage himself, perhaps even a Rider of the Clave could not travel swiftly through the various avatars of the Sunbane. Clenching that idea in his sore throat, he angled in the direction of the Hills.

  With Vain striding impassively behind him, he crossed into lushness shortly before dusk. In his bitterness, he did not rejoice to be back within the Land’s last bastion of health and Law; but the spring of the turf and the vitality of the aliantha affected him like rejoicing. Strength flowed back into his veins; his sight cleared; his raw mouth and throat began to heal. Through the gold-orange emblazonry of the sunset, he stiffened his pace and headed grimly along the skirts of the Hills.

  All that night, he did not stop for more than scant moments at a time. Sustained by Andelain, his body bore the merciless demand of his will. The moon was too new to give him aid; but few trees grew along the edges of the Hills and, under an open sky, star-glister sufficed to light his way. Drinking metheglin and chewing bread for energy, he stalked the hillsides and the vales. When his pouch was empty, he discarded it. And at all times his gaze was turned westward, searching the Plains for any sign of a fire which might indicate, beyond hope or chance, that the Rider and his prisoners were still within reach. By dawn, he was twenty leagues from Stonemight Woodhelven, and still marching, as if by sheer stubbornness he had abrogated his mortality.

  But he could not make himself immune to exhaustion. In spite of aliantha and clear spring water, bounteous grass and air as vital as an elixir, his exertions eroded him like leprosy. He had passed his limits, and traveled now on borrowed endurance—stamina wrested by plain intransigence from the ruinous usury of time. Eventually he came to believe that the end was near, waiting to ambush him at the crest of every rise, at the bottom of every slope. Then his heart rose up in him and, because he was Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, responsible beyond any exculpation for the outcome of his life, he began to run.

  Staggering, stumbling at every third stride, he lumbered northwest, always northwest, within the marge of Andelain, and did not count the cost. Only one concession did he make to his wracked breathing and torn muscles: he ate treasure-berries from every aliantha he passed, and threw the seeds out into the wasteland. Throughout the day he ran, though by midafternoon his pace was no better than a walk; and throughout the day Vain followed, matching stride for stride with his own invulnerability the exhaustion which crumbled Covenant.

  Shortly after dark, Covenant broke. He missed his footing, fell, and could not rise. His lungs shuddered for air, but he was not aware of them. Everything in his chest seemed numb, beyond help. He lay stunned until his pulse slowed to a limp and his lungs stopped shivering. Then he slept.

  He was awakened near midnight by the touch of a cold hand on his soul. A chill that resembled regret more than fear ran through him. He jerked up his head.

  Three silver forms like distilled moonlight stood before him. When he had squeezed the blur of prostration from his sight, he recognized them.

  Lena, the woman he had raped.

  Atiaran and Trell, her parents.

  Trell—tall, bluff, mighty Trell—had been deeply hurt by the harm Covenant had done to Lena and by the damage Atiaran had inflicted on herself in her efforts to serve the Land by saving her daughter’s rapist. But the crowning anguish of his life, the pain which had finally unbalanced his mind, had been dealt him by the love Elena Lena-daughter bore for Covenant.

  Atiaran had sacrificed all her instincts, all her hard-won sense of rectitude, for Covenant’s sake; she had believed him necessary to the Land’s survival. But the implications of that self-injury had cost her her life in the end.

  And Lena—ah, Lena! She had lived on for almost fifty years, serene in the mad belief that Covenant would return and marry her. And when he had returned—when she had learned that he was responsible for the death of Elena, that he was the cause of the immense torment of the Ranyhyn she adored—she had yet chosen to sacrifice herself in an attempt to save his life.

  She did not appear before him in the loveliness of youth, but rather in the brittle caducity of age; and his worn heart cried out to her. He had paid every price he could find in an extravagant effort to rectify his wrongs; but he had never learned to shed the burden of remorse.

  Trell, Atiaran, Lena. In each of their faces, he read a reproach as profound as human pain could make it. But when Lena spoke, she did not derogate him. “Thomas Covenant, you have stressed yourself beyond the ability of your body. If you sleep further, it may be that Andelain will spare you from death, but you will not awaken until a day has been lost. Perhaps your spirit has no bounds. Still you are not wise to punish yourself so. Arise! You must eat and move about, lest your flesh fail you.”

  “It is truth,” Atiaran added severely. “You punish yourself for the plight of your companions. But such castigation is a doom which achieves itself. Appalling yourself thus, you ensure that you will fail to redeem your companions. And failure demonstrates your unworth. In punishing yourself, you come to merit punishment. This is Despite, Unbeliever. Arise and eat.”

  Trell did not speak. But his mute stare was unarguable. Humbly because of who they were, and because he recognized what they said, Covenant obeyed. His body wept in every joint and thew; but he could not refuse his Dead. Tears ran down his face as he understood that these three—people who in life had had more cause to hate him than anyone else—had come to him here in order to help him.

  Lena’s arm pointed silver toward a nearby aliantha. “Eat every berry. If you falter, we will compel you.”

  He obeyed, ate all the ripe fruit he could find in the darkness with his numb fingers. Then, tears cold on his cheeks, he set off once again in the direction of Revelstone with his Dead about him like a cortege.

  At first, every step was a torment. But slowly he came to feel the wisdom of what his Dead required him to do. His heart grew gradually steadier; the ac
he of his breathing receded as his muscles loosened. None of the three spectres spoke again, and he had neither the temerity nor the stamina to address them. In silence, the meager procession wound its argent, ghostly way along the border of Andelain. For a long time after his weeping stopped, Covenant went on shedding grief inwardly because his ills were irrevocable, and he could never redeem the misery he had given Trell, Atiaran, and Lena. Never.

  Before dawn, they left him—turned abruptly away toward the center of Andelain without allowing him an opportunity to thank them. This he understood; perhaps no gall would have been as bitter to them as the thanks of the Unbeliever. So he said nothing of his gratitude. He stood facing their departure like a salute, murmuring promises in his heart. When their silver had faded, he continued along the path of his purpose.

  Dawn and a fresh, gay brook, which lay like music across his track, gave him new strength; he was able to amend his pace until it bore some resemblance to his earlier progress. With Vain always behind him like a detached shadow, he spent the third day of the desert sun traveling Andelain as swiftly as he could without risking another collapse.

  That evening, he stopped soon after sunset, under the shelter of a hoary willow. He ate a few aliantha, finished the last of his bread, then spent some time seated with his back to the trunk. The tree stood high above the Plains, and he sat facing westward, studying the open expanse of the night without hope, almost without volition, because the plight of his companions did not allow him to relax.

  The first blink of fire snatched him instantly to his feet.

  The flame vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. But a moment later it recurred. This time, it caught. After several tentative flickers, it became steady.

  It was due west of him.

  In the darkness, he could not estimate the distance. And he knew logically that it could not be a sign of Linden and the Stonedownors; surely a Rider could travel farther than this on a Courser in five days. But he did not hesitate. Gesturing to Vain, he started down the hill.

  The pressure within him mounted at every stride. As he crossed out of Andelain, he was moving at a lope. The fire promptly disappeared beyond a rise in the ground. But he had the direction firmly fixed in his mind. Across the Sunbane-ruined earth he went with alacrity and clenched breath, like a man eager to confront his doom.

  He had covered half a league before he glimpsed the fire again. It lay beyond still another rise. But he was close enough now to see that it was large. As he ascended the second rise, he remembered caution and slowed his pace. Climbing the last way in a stealthy crouch, he carefully peered over the ridge.

  There: the fire.

  Holding his breath, he scanned the area around the blaze,

  From the ridge, the ground sloped sharply, then swept away in a long shallow curve for several hundred feet before curling steeply upward to form a wide escarpment. In a place roughly opposite his position, the contour of the ground and the overhang of the escarpment combined to make a depression like a bowl half-buried on edge against the wall of the higher terrain.

  The fire burned in this vertical concavity. The half bowl reflected much of the light, but the distance still obscured some details. He could barely see that the fire blazed in a long, narrow mound of wood. The mound lay aimed toward the heart of the bowl; and the fire had obviously been started at the end away from the escarpment, so that, as new wood caught flame, the blaze moved into the bowl. Half the length of the woodpile had already been consumed.

  The surrounding area was deserted. Covenant descried no sign of whoever had contrived such a fire. Yet the arrangement was manifestly premeditated. Except for the hunger of the flames, an eerie silence lay over the Plains.

  A figure snagged the corner of Covenant’s vision. He turned, and saw Vain standing beside him. The Demondim-spawn made no attempt to conceal himself below the ridge.

  “Idiot!” whispered Covenant fiercely. “Get down!”

  Vain paid no attention. He regarded the fire with the same blind, ambiguous smile that he had worn while traveling through Andelain. Or while killing the people of Stonemight Woodhelven. Covenant grabbed at his arm; but Vain was immovable.

  Through his teeth, Covenant muttered, “Damn you, anyway. Someday you’re going to be the death of me.”

  When he looked back toward the fire, it had moved noticeably toward the escarpment, and the bowl was brighter. With a sudden rush of dismay, he saw that the mound of wood ended in a pile around an upright stake as tall and heavy as a man.

  Someone or something was tied to the stake. Tied alive. The indistinct figure was struggling.

  Hell and blood! Covenant instinctively recognized a trap. For a moment, he was paralyzed. He could not depart, leave that bound figure to burn. And he could not approach closer. An abominable purpose was at work here, malice designed to snare him—or someone else equally vulnerable. Someone else? That question had no answer. But as he gritted himself, trying to squeeze a decision out of his paralysis, he remembered Mhoram’s words: It boots nothing to avoid his snares—

  Abruptly he rose to his feet. “Stay here,” he breathed at Vain. “No sense both of us getting into trouble.” Then he went down the slope and strode grimly toward the fire.

  Vain followed as usual. Covenant could hardly keep from raging at the Demondim-spawn. But he did not stop.

  As he neared the escarpment, the fire began to lick at the woodpile around the stake. He broke into a run. In moments, he was within the bowl and staring at the bait of the trap.

  The creature bound to the stake was one of the Waynhim.

  Like the ur-viles, the Waynhim were Demondim-spawn. Except for their gray skin and smaller stature, they resembled the ur-viles closely. Their hairless bodies had long trunks and short limbs, with the arms and legs matched in length so that the creatures could run on all fours as well as walk erect. Their pointed ears sat high on their bald skulls; their mouths were like slits. And they had no eyes; they used scent instead of vision. Wide nostrils gaped in the centers of their faces.

  As products of the Demondim, the Waynhim were lore-wise and cunning. But, unlike their black kindred, they had broken with Lord Foul after the Ritual of Desecration. Covenant had heard that the Waynhim as a race served the Land according to their private standards; but he had seen nothing more of them since his last stay at Revelstone, when a Waynhim had escaped from Foul’s Creche to bring the Council word of Lord Foul’s power.

  The creature before Covenant now was in tremendous pain. Its skin was raw. Dark blood oozed from scores of lash-marks. One of its arms bent at an angle of agony, and its left ear had been ripped away. But it was conscious. Its head followed his approach, nostrils quivering. When he stopped to consider its situation, it strained toward him, begging for rescue.

  “Hang on,” he rasped, though he did not know if the creature could understand him. “I’ll get you out.” Fuming in outrage, he began to scatter the wood, kicking dead boughs and brush out of his way as he reached toward the stake.

  But then the creature seemed to become aware of a new scent. Perhaps it caught the smell of his wedding ring. He knew that Demondim-spawn were capable of such perceptions. It burst into a fit of agitation, began barking in its harsh, guttural tongue. Urgency filled its voice. Covenant grasped none of its language; but he heard one word which sent a chill of apprehension down his spine. Again and again, the Waynhim barked, “Nekhrimah!”

  Bloody hell! The creature was trying to give Vain some kind of command.

  Covenant did not stop. The creature’s desperation became his. Heaving wood aside, he cleared a path to the stake. At once, he snatched the Graveler’s knife from his belt and began to slash the vines binding the Waynhim.

  In a moment, the creature was free. Covenant helped it limp out of the woodpile. Immediately, the creature turned on Vain, emitted a stream of language like a curse. Then it grabbed Covenant’s arm and tugged him away from the fire.

  Southward.

  “No.” He
detached his arm with difficulty. Though the Waynhim probably could not comprehend him, he tried to explain. “I’m going north. I’ve got to get to Revelstone.”

  The creature let out a muffled cry as if it knew the significance of that word Revelstone. With a swiftness which belied its injuries, it scuttled out of the bowl along the line of the escarpment. A moment later, it had vanished in the darkness.

  Covenant’s dread mounted. What had the Waynhim tried to tell him? It had infected him with a vivid sense of peril. But he did not intend to take even one step that increased the distance between him and Linden. His only alternative was to flee as quickly as possible. He turned back toward Vain.

  The suddenness of the surprise froze him.

  A man stood on the other side of the fire.

  He had a ragged beard and frenzied eyes. In contrast, his lips wore a shy smile. “Let it be,” he said, nodding after the Waynhim. “We have no more need of it.” He moved slowly around the fire, drawing closer to Covenant and Vain. For all its surface nonchalance, his voice was edged with hysteria.

  He reached Covenant’s side of the blaze. A sharp intake of air hissed through Covenant’s teeth.

  The man was naked to the waist, and his torso was behung with salamanders. They grew out of him like excrescences. Their bodies twitched as he moved. Their eyes glinted redly in the firelight, and their jaws snapped.

  A victim of the Sunbane!

  Remembering Marid, Covenant brandished his knife. “That’s close enough,” he warned; but his voice shook, exposing his fear. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “No,” the man replied, “you do not wish to hurt me.” He grinned like a friendly gargoyle. “And I have no wish to hurt you.” His hands were clasped together in front of him as if they contained something precious. “I wish to give you a gift.”