The Wounded Land

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “That was their legend—the hope that kept them sane. They believed that someday somebody pure—somebody who didn’t have Foul’s hands clenched in his soul—would come and free them. If they were worthy. Worthy! They were so tormented. There wasn’t enough weeping in all the world to describe their worth. And I couldn’t—” He choked on his old rage for victims, the preterite and the dispossessed. “I had power, but I wasn’t pure. I was so full of disease and violence—” His hands groped the air, came back empty. “And they still helped us. They thought they had nothing to live for, and they helped—”

  His vision of their courage held him silent for a moment. But his friends were waiting; the First was waiting. The sur-jheherrin had begun to move off the peninsula, absorbing skest. He drove himself to continue.

  “But they couldn’t tell us how to get across Hotash Slay. It was lava. We didn’t have any way to get across. Foamfollower—” The Giant had shouted, ‘I am the last of the Giants. I will give my life as I choose.’ Covenant’s memory of that cry would never be healed. “Foamfollower carried me. He just walked the lava until it sucked him down. Then he threw me to the other side.” His grief resounded in him like a threat of wild magic, unaneled power. “I thought he was dead.”

  His eyes burned with recollections of magma. “But he wasn’t dead. He came back. I couldn’t do it alone, couldn’t even get into Foul’s Creche, never mind find the thronehall, save the Land. He came back to help me. Purified. All his hurts seared, all his hate and lust for killing and contempt for himself gone. He gave me what I needed when I didn’t have anything left, gave me joy and laughter and courage. So that I could finish what I had to do without committing another Desecration. Even though it killed him.”

  Oh, Foamfollower!

  “He was the Pure One. The one who freed the jheherrin. Freed the Land. By laughing. A Giant.”

  He glared at the company. In the isolation of what he remembered, he was prepared to fight them all for the respect Foamfollower deserved. But his unquenched passion had nowhere to go. Tears reflected orange and green from Honninscrave’s cheeks. Pitchwife’s mien was a clench of sorrow. The First swallowed thickly, fighting for sternness. When she spoke, her words were stiff with the strain of self-mastery,

  “I must hear more of the Giants you have known. Thomas Covenant, we will accompany you from this place.”

  A spasm of personal misery knotted Seadreamer’s face. The scar under his eyes ached like a protest; but he had no voice.

  In silence, Brinn took Covenant’s arm and drew him away toward the end of the peninsula. The company followed. Ahead the sur-jheherrin had consumed a passage through the skest. Brinn moved swiftly, pulling Covenant at a half-run toward the free night.

  When they had passed the skest, the Haruchai turned eastward.

  As the company fled, a screech of rage shivered the darkness, rang savagely across the Sarangrave. But in front of Covenant and Brinn, sur-jheherrin appeared, glowing orange and red.

  Guided by clay forms, the company began to run.

  TWENTY-SIX: Coercri

  Five days later, they reached the verge of Sarangrave Flat and broke out of jungle and wetland into the late afternoon of a cloudless sky. The sur-jheherrin were unexpectedly swift, and their knowledge of the Flat was intimate; they set a pace Covenant could not have matched. And Sunder and Hollian were in little better condition. Left to their own strength, they would have moved more slowly. Perhaps they would have died.

  So for a large portion of each day, the Giants carried them. Seadreamer still bore Linden supine in his arms to protect her leg; but Sunder sat against the First’s back, using her shield as a sling; Hollian straddled Pitchwife’s hunched shoulders; and Covenant rode in the crook of Honninscrave’s elbow. No one protested this arrangement. Covenant was too weary to feel any shame at his need for help. And peril prevented every other form of pride.

  At intervals throughout those five days, the air became turgid screams, afflicting the company with an atavistic dread for which there was no anodyne except flight. Four times, they were threatened. Twice, hordes of skest appeared out of dark streams and tar-pits; twice, the lurker itself attacked. But, aided by the sur-jheherrin and by plentiful supplies of green wood, the Haruchai and the Giants were able to repulse the skest. And Covenant opposed the lurker with the light of the krill, lashing white fire from the unveiled gem until the lurker quailed and fled, yowling insanely.

  When he had the chance, during times of rest or less frenetic travel, Honninscrave asked the sur-jheherrin more questions, gleaning knowledge of them. Their story was a terse one, but it delineated clearly enough the outlines of the past.

  For a time which must have been measured in centuries after the fall of Foul’s Creche, the jheherrin had huddled fearfully in their homes, not daring to trust their redemption, trust that they had been found worthy. But at last they had received proof strong enough for their timorous hearts. Freed from the Despiser’s power and from the corruptive might of the Illearth Stone, the jheherrin had regained the capacity to bring forth children. That was redemption, indeed. Their children they named the sur-jheherrin, to mark their new freedom. In the age which followed, the soft ones began the long migration which took them from the place of their former horror.

  From cave to mud pit, quagmire to swamp, underground spring to riverbed, they moved northward across the years, seeking terrain in which they could flourish. And they found what they needed in the Sarangrave. For them, it was a place of safety: their clay flesh and mobility, their ability to live in the bottoms of quicksands and streams, suited them perfectly to the Flat. And in safety they healed their old terror, became creatures who could face pain and risk, if need arose.

  Thus their gratitude toward the Pure One grew rather than diminished through the generations. When they saw Giants in peril, their decision of aid was made without hesitation for all the sur-jheherrin throughout the Sarangrave.

  And with that aid, the company finally reached the narrow strip of open heath which lay between the time-swollen Sarangrave and the boundary hills of Seareach. The quest was in grim flight from the most desperate assault of the skest. But suddenly the trees parted, unfurling the cerulean sky like a reprieve overhead. The smell of bracken replaced the dank stenches and fears of the Flat. Ahead the grass-mantled hills rose like the battlements of a protected place.

  The Giants ran a short distance across the heath like Ranyhyn tasting freedom, then wheeled to look behind them.

  The skest had vanished. The air was still, unappalled by lust or rage, empty of any sound except bird calls and breeze. Even the solidity of the ground underfoot was a surcease from trepidation.

  The sur-jheherrin, too, melted back into the Flat as if to avoid thanks. At once, Covenant shrugged himself from Honninscrave’s arm and returned to the edges of the jungle, trying to find the words he wanted. But his heart had become a wilderland where few words grew. He could do nothing except stare dumbly through the trees with the sun in his face, thinking like an ache, Foamfollower would be proud.

  The First joined him and gazed into the Sarangrave with an unwonted softness in her eyes. Brinn joined him; all his companions joined him, standing like a salute to the unquestionable worth of the sur-jheherrin.

  Later the Haruchai unpacked their supplies and prepared a meal. There between the Sarangrave and Seareach, the company fed and tried to measure the implications of their situation.

  Linden sat, alert and awkward, with her back braced against Seadreamer’s shin; she needed the support because of the rigid splint on her left leg. She had awakened a day and a half after her injury and had taken pains to assure her companions that her ankle was knitting properly. Diamondraught was a potent healer. But since then, Covenant had had no chance to talk to her. Though Seadreamer carried a constant unhappiness on his face, he tended Linden as if she were a child.

  Covenant sorely wanted to speak with her. But for the present, sitting in the bracken with the afternoon
sun slanting toward evening across his shoulders, he was preoccupied by other questions. The Giants had brought him this far; but they had not been persuaded to give him the help he needed. And he had promised them the tale of the Unhomed. He could not imagine ever having enough courage to tell it.

  Yet he had to say something. Sunder and Hollian had moved away into the dark, seeking a private relief. Covenant understood. After all their other losses, they now had before them a world for which they were not equipped—a world without the Sunbane that made them valuable to their companions. But the Giants sat expectantly around the flames, waiting to hear him argue for their aid. Something he must say. Yet it was not in him.

  At last, the First broke the silence. “Giantfriend.” She used the title she had given him gently. “You have known Giants—the people of your friend, Saltheart Foamfollower. We deeply desire to hear their story. We have seen in you that it is not a glad tale. But the Giants say that joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that speaks. We will know how to hear you with joy, though the telling pains you.”

  “Joy.” Covenant swallowed the breaking of his voice. Her words seemed to leech away what little fortitude he had left. He knew what the Giants would do when they heard his story. “No. Not yet. I’m not ready.”

  From his position behind Covenant, Brinn said, “That tale is known among the old tellers of the Haruchai.” He moved closer to the fire, met the sudden dismay in Covenant’s face. “I will tell it, though I have not been taught the skill of stories.” In spite of its dispassion, his gaze showed that he was offering a gift, offering to carry one of Covenant’s burdens for him.

  But Covenant knew the story too well. The fate of the Bloodguard and their Vow was inextricably bound up with the doom of the Seareach Giants. In his Haruchai honesty, Brinn would certainly reveal parts of the story which Covenant would never choose to tell. Brinn would disclose that Korik’s mission to the Unhomed had reached Coercri with Lord Hyrim during the slaughter of the Giants by a Giant-Raver. Three of the Bloodguard had survived, had succeeded in killing the Giant-Raver, had captured a fragment of the Illearth Stone. But the Stone had corrupted them, turning them to the service of Lord Foul. And this corruption had so appalled the Bloodguard that they had broken their Vow, had abandoned the Lords during the Land’s gravest peril. Surely Brinn would describe such things as if they were not a great grief to his people, not the reason why group after group of Haruchai had returned to the Land, falling prey to the butchery of the Clave. This Covenant could not bear. The Bloodguard had always judged themselves by standards which no mortal could meet.

  “No,” Covenant almost moaned. He faced Brinn, gave the only answer he had. You don’t have to do that. It’s past. It wasn’t their fault. “ ‘Corruption wears many faces.’ ” He was quoting Bannor. “ ‘Blame is a more enticing face than others, but it is none the less a mask for the Despiser.’ ” Do you know that Foul maimed those three Bloodguard? Made them into half-hands? “I’ll tell it.” It’s on my head. “When I’m ready.” A pang of augury told him that Haruchai were going to die because of him.

  Brinn studied him for a moment. Then the Haruchai shrugged fractionally, withdrew to his place guarding Covenant’s back. Covenant was left with nothing between him and the intent eyes of the Giants.

  “Giantfriend,” the First said slowly, “such tales must be shared to be borne. An untold tale withers the heart. But I do not ask that you ease your heart. I ask for myself. Your tale concerns my kindred. And I am the First of the Search. You have spoken of the Sunbane which so appalls the Earth. My duty lies there. In the west. Seadreamer’s Earth-Sight is clear. We must seek out this evil and oppose it. Yet you desire our aid. You ask for our proud dromond Starfare’s Gem. You assert that your path is the true path of the Search. And you refuse to speak to us concerning our people.

  “Thomas Covenant, I ask for your tale because I must choose. Only in stories may the truth to guide me be found. Lacking the knowledge which moves your heart, I lack means to judge your path and your desires. You must speak.”

  Must? In his emotional poverty, he wanted to cry out, You don’t know what you’re doing! But the Giants regarded him with eyes which asked and probed. Honninscrave wore his resemblance to Foamfollower as if that oblique ancestry became him. Seadreamer’s stare seemed rife with Earth-Sight. Empathy complicated Pitchwife’s smile. Covenant groaned inwardly.

  “These hills—” He gestured eastward, moving his half-hand like a man plucking the only words he could find. “They’re the boundary of Seareach. Where the Giants I knew used to live. They had a city on the Sea. Coercri. The Grieve. I want to go there.”

  The First did not reply, did not blink.

  He clenched his fist and strove to keep himself intact. “That’s where they were murdered.”

  Honninscrave’s eyes flared. Pitchwife drew a hissing breath through his teeth. “In their homes?”

  “Yes.”

  The First of the Search glared at Covenant. He met her look, saw dismay, doubt, judgment seethe like sea shadows behind her eyes. In spite of his fear, he felt strangely sure that her anger would give him what he wanted.

  In a tone of quiet iron, she said, “Honninscrave will return to Starfare’s Gem. He will bring the Giantship northward. We will meet at this Coercri. Thus I prepare to answer your desires—if I am persuaded by your tale. And the others of the Search will wish to behold a city of Giants in this lost land.

  “Thomas Covenant, I will wait. We will accompany you to the coast of Seareach. But”—her voice warned him like a sword in her hands—“I will hear this tale of murder.”

  Covenant nodded. He folded his arms over his knees, buried his face between his elbows; he needed to be alone with his useless rue. You’ll hear it. Have mercy on me.

  Without a word, Honninscrave began to pack the supplies he would need. Soon he was gone, striding briskly toward the Sea as if his Giantish bones could do without rest forever.

  The sound of Honninscrave’s departure seemed to stretch out Covenant’s exhaustion until it covered everything. He settled himself for sleep as if he hoped that he would never awaken.

  But he came out of dreams under the full light of the moon. In the last flames of the campfire, he could see the Giants and the Stonedownors slumbering. Dimly, he made out the poised, dark shapes of the Haruchai. Vain stood at the edge of the light, staring at nothing like an entranced prophet.

  A glimpse of orange-red reflecting from Linden’s eyes revealed that she also was awake. Covenant left his blankets. His desire for the escape of sleep was strong, but his need to talk to her was stronger. Moving quietly, he went to her side.

  She acknowledged him with a nod, but did not speak. As he sat beside her, she went on staring into the embers.

  He did not know how to approach her; he was ignorant of any names which might unlock her. Tentatively he asked, “How’s your leg?”

  Her whisper came out of the dark, like a voice from another world. “Now I know how Lena must have felt.”

  Lena? Surprise and shame held him mute. He had told her about that crime when she had not wanted to hear. What did it mean to her now?

  “You raped her. But she believed in you and she let you go. It’s like that for me.”

  She fell silent. He waited for a long moment, then said in a stiff murmur, “Tell me.”

  “Almost everything I see is a rape.” She spoke so softly that he had to strain to hear her. “The Sunbane. The Sarangrave. When that Raver touched me, I felt as if I had the Sunbane inside me. I don’t know how you live with that venom. Sometimes I can’t even stand to look at you. That touch denied everything about me. I’ve spent half my life fighting to be a doctor. But when I saw Joan, I was so horrified—I couldn’t bear it. It made me into a lie. That’s why I followed you.

  “That Raver—It was like with Joan, but a thousand times worse. Before that, I could at least survive what I was seeing—the Sunbane, what it did to the Land—because I thought it
was a disease. But when he touched me, he made everything evil. My whole life. Lena must have felt like that.”

  Covenant locked his hands together and waited. After a while, she went on. “But my ankle is healing. I can feel it. When it was broken, I could see inside it, see everything that needed to be done, how to get the bones back into place. I knew when they were set right. And now I can feel them healing. They’re fusing just the way they should. The tissues, the blood-vessels and nerves—” She paused as if she could not contain all her emotion in a whisper. “And that diamondraught speeds up the process. I’ll be able to walk in a few days.”

  She turned to face him squarely. “Lena must have felt like that, too. Or she couldn’t have let you get away with it.

  “Covenant.” Her tone pleaded for his understanding. “I need to heal things. I need it. That’s why I became a doctor, and why I can’t stand all this evil. It isn’t something I can heal. I can’t cure souls. I can’t cure myself.”

  He wanted to understand, yearned to comprehend her. Her eyes reflected the embers of the fire like echoes of supplication. But he had so little knowledge of who she was, how she had come to be such a person. Yet the surface of her need was plain enough. With an effort, he swallowed his uncertainty, his fear. “The One Tree,” he breathed. “We’ll find it. The Giants know whom to ask to find out where it is. We’ll make a Staff of Law. You’ll be able to go home. Somehow.”

  She looked away, as if this were not the answer she desired. But when she spoke, she asked, “Do you think they’re going to help us? Seadreamer doesn’t want to. I can see it. His Earth-Sight is like what I feel. But it’s with him all the time. Distance doesn’t make any difference. The Sunbane eats at him all the time. He wants to face it. Fight it. End what’s happening to him. And the First trusts him. Do you think you can convince her?”

  “Yes.” What else could he offer her? He made promises he did not know how to keep because he had nothing else to give. “She isn’t going to like it. But I’ll find a way.”