The Wounded Land

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  She nodded as if to herself. For a while she was still, musing privately over the coals like a woman who needed courage and only knew how to look for it alone. Then she said, “I can’t go back to the Sunbane.” Her whisper was barely audible. “I can’t.”

  Hearing her, Covenant wanted to say, You won’t have to. But that was a promise he feared to make. In Andelain, Mhoram had said, The thing you seek is not what it appears to be. In the end, you must return to the Land. Not what it appears—? Not the One Tree? The Staff of Law?

  That thought took him from Linden’s side; he could not face it. He went like a craven back to his blankets and lay there hugging his apprehension until his weariness pulled him back to sleep.

  The next morning, while the sunrise was still hidden, lambent and alluring behind the hills, the company climbed into Seareach.

  They ascended the slope briskly, in spite of Covenant’s grogginess, and stood gazing out into the dawn and the wide region which had once been Saltheart Foamfollower’s home. The crisp breeze chilled their faces; and in the taintless light, they saw that autumn had come to the fair land of Seareach. Below them, woods nestled within the curve of the hills: oak, maple, and sycamore anademed in fall-change; Gilden gloriously bedecked. And beyond the woods lay rolling grasslands as luxuriously green as the last glow of summer.

  Seeing Seareach for the first time—seeing health and beauty for the first time since he had left Andelain—Covenant felt strangely dry and detached. Essential parts of him were becoming numb. His ring hung heavily on his half-hand, as if, when his two fingers had been amputated, he had also lost his answer to self-doubt. Back at Revelstone, innocent men and women were being slain to feed the Sunbane. While that crime continued, no health in all the world could make a difference to him.

  Yet he was vaguely surprised that Sunder and Hollian did not appear pleased by what they saw. They gazed at the autumn as if it were Andelain—a siren-song, seductive and false, concealing madness. They had been taught to feel threatened by the natural loveliness of the Earth. They did not know who they were in such a place. With the Sunbane, Lord Foul had accomplished more than the corruption of nature. He had dispossessed people like the Stonedownors from the simple human capacity to be moved by beauty. Once again, Covenant was forced to think of them as lepers.

  But the others were keenly gladdened by the view. Appreciation softened the First’s stern countenance; Pitchwife chuckled gently under his breath, as if he could not contain his happiness; Seadreamer’s misery melted somewhat, allowing him to smile. The Haruchai stiffened slightly, as if in their thoughts they stood to attention out of respect for the fealty and sorrow which had once inhabited Seareach. And Linden gazed into the sunrise as if the autumn offered her palliation for her personal distress. Only Vain showed no reaction. The Demondim-spawn seemed to care for nothing under any sun.

  At last, the First broke the silence. “Let us be on our way. My heart has conceived a desire to behold this city which Giants have named The Grieve.”

  Pitchwife let out a laugh like the cry of a kestrel, strangely lorn and glad. With a lumbering stride, he set off into the morning. Ceer and Hergrom followed. The First also followed. Seadreamer moved like the shifting of a colossus, stiff and stony in his private pain. Sunder scowled apprehensively; Hollian gnawed at her lower lip. Together they started after the Giants, flanked by Stell and Harn. And Covenant went with them like a man whose spirit had lost all its resilience.

  Descending toward the trees, Pitchwife began to sing. His voice was hoarse, as if he had spent too much of his life singing threnodies; yet his song was as heart-lifting as trumpets. His melody was full of wind and waves, of salt and strain, and of triumph over pain. As clearly as the new day, he sang:

  “Let breakers crash against the shore—

  let rocks be rimed with sea and weed,

  cliffs carven by the storm—

  let calm becalm the deeps,

  or wind appall the waves, and sting—

  and sting—

  nothing overweighs the poise of Sea and Stone.

  The rocks and water-battery of Home endure.

  We are the Giants,

  born to live,

  and bold for going where the dreaming goes.

  “Let world be wide beyond belief,

  the ocean be as vast as time—

  let journeys end or fail,

  seaquests fall in ice or blast,

  and wandering be forever. Roam—

  and roam—

  nothing tarnishes the poise of Sea and Stone.

  The hearth and harborage of Home endure.

  We are the Giants,

  born to sail,

  and bold to go wherever dreaming goes.”

  On his song went, on through the trees and the fall-fire of the leaves, on into poignancy and yearning and the eagerness to hear any tale the world told. It carried the quest forward, lightened Seadreamer’s gaze; it eased the discomfort of the Stonedownors like an affirmation against the unknown, gave a spring to the dispassionate strides of the Haruchai, Echoing in Covenant’s mind like the thronged glory of the trees, it solaced his unambergrised heart for a time, so that he could walk the land which had been Foamfollower’s home without faltering.

  He had been too long under the Sunbane, too long away from the Land he remembered. His eyes drank at the trees and the grasslands, the scapes and vistas, as if such things ended a basic drought, restored to him the reasons for his quest. Beyond the hills, Seareach became a lush profusion of grapes, like a vineyard gone wild for centuries; and in it birds flocked, beasts made their homes. If he had not lacked Linden’s vision, he could have spent days simply renewing his sense of health.

  But he was condemned to the surface of what he beheld. As the leagues stretched ahead of him, threescore or more to the coast, his urgency returned. At his back, people were dying to pay for every day of his journey. Yet he could not walk any faster. A crisis was brewing within him. Power; venom; rage. Impossible to live with wild magic. Impossible to live without it. Impossible to keep all the promises he had made. He had no answer. He was as mortal as any leper. His tension was futile. Seeking to delay the time of impact, when the storm born of venom and doubt would hit, he cast around for ways to occupy his mind.

  Linden was wrapped up in her efforts to recover from the damage the Sunbane and Sarangrave Flat had done to her. Sunder and Hollian shared an air of discomfiture, as if they no longer knew what they were doing. So Covenant turned to the Giants, to Pitchwife, who was as loquacious as the First was stern.

  His misshapen features worked grotesquely as he talked; but his appearance was contradicted by his lucid gaze and irrepressible humor. At the touch of a question, he spoke about the ancient Home of the Giants, about the wide seas of the world, about the wonders and mysteries of roaming. When he became excited, his breathing wheezed in his cramped lungs; but for him, even that difficult sound was a form of communication, an effort to convey something quintessential about himself. His talk was long and full of digressions, Giantish apostrophes to the eternal grandeur of rock and ocean; but gradually he came to speak of the Search, and of the Giants who led it.

  Cable Seadreamer’s role needed no explanation; his Earth-Sight guided the Search. And his muteness, the extravagant horror which had bereft him of voice, as if the attempt to put what he saw into speech had sealed his throat, only made his claim on the Search more absolute.

  But being Seadreamer’s brother was not the reason for Grimmand Honninscrave’s presence. The Giantclave had selected him primarily for his skill as pilot and captain; he was the Master of the dromond Starfare’s Gem, and proud in the pride of his ship.

  As for the First, she was a Swordmain, one of the few Swordmainnir among the current generation of the Giants, who had maintained for millennia a cadre of such fighters to aid their neighbors and friends at need. She had been chosen because she was known to be as resolute as Stone, as crafty as Sea—and because she had bested every ot
her Swordmain to win a place at the head of the Search.

  “But why?” asked Covenant. “Why did she want the job?”

  “Why?” Pitchwife grinned. “In good sooth, why should she not? She is a Swordmain, trained for battle. She knows, as do we all, that this wound will grow to consume the Earth unless it is opposed. And she believes that its ill is already felt, even across the land of Home, giving birth to evil seas and blighted crops. And cripples.” His eyes glinted merrily, defying Covenant to pity his deformity.

  “All right.” Covenant swallowed the indignation he usually felt whenever he encountered someone whose happiness seemed to be divorced from the hard fact of pain. “Tell me about yourself. Why were you chosen?”

  “Ah, that is no great mystery. Every ship, however proud, must have a pitchwife, and I am an adept, cunning to mend both hawser and shipstone. Also my lesser stature enables me for work in places where other Giants lack space. And for another reason, better than all others.” He lowered his voice and spoke privately to Covenant. “I am husband to the First of the Search.”

  Involuntarily Covenant gaped. For an instant, he believed that Pitchwife was jesting ironically. But the Giant’s humor was personal. “To me,” he whispered, so that the First could not hear him, “she is named Gossamer Glowlimn. I could not bear that she should sail on such a Search without me.”

  Covenant remained silent, unable to think of any adequate response. I am husband— Echoes of Joan ran through him; but when he tried to call up her face, he could find nothing except images of Linden.

  During the evening of the quest’s third day in Seareach, Linden borrowed Hollian’s dirk to cut the splint away from her leg. Her companions watched as she tentatively flexed her knee, then her ankle. Light twinges of pain touched her face, but she ignored them, concentrating on the inner state of her bones and tissues. After a moment, her features relaxed. “It’s just stiff. I’ll try walking on it tomorrow.”

  A sigh rustled through the company. “That is good,” the First said kindly. Sunder nodded gruff agreement. Hollian stooped to Linden, hugged her. Linden accepted their gladness; but her gaze reached toward Covenant, and her eyes were full of tears for which he had no answer. He could not teach her to distinguish between the good and ill of her health sense.

  The next morning, she put weight on her foot, and the bones held. She was not ready to do much walking; so Seadreamer continued to carry her. But the following day she began working to redevelop the strength of her legs, and the day after that she was able to walk at intervals for nearly half the company’s march.

  By that time, Covenant knew they were nearing the Sea. The terrain had been sloping slowly for days, losing elevation along rumpled hills and wide, wild, hay leas, down fields like terraces cut for Giants. Throngs of grave old woods leaned slightly, as if they were listening to the Sea; and now the crispness of the air had been replaced by moisture and weight, so that every breeze felt like the sighing of the ocean. He could not smell salt yet; but he did not have much time left.

  That night, his dreams were troubled by the hurling of breakers. The tumult turned his sleep into a nightmare of butchery, horror made all the more unbearable by vagueness, for he did not know who was being butchered or why, could not perceive any detail except blood, blood everywhere, the blood of innocence and self-judgment, permitting murder. He awoke on the verge of screams, and found that he was drenched by a thunderstorm. He was cold, and could not stop shivering.

  After a time, the blue lash and clap of the storm passed, riding a stiff wind out of the east; but the rain continued. Dawn came, shrouded in torrents which soaked the quest until Covenant’s bones felt sodden, and even the Giants moved as if they were carrying too much weight. Shouting over the noise, Pitchwife suggested that they find or make shelter to wait out the storm. But Covenant could not wait. Every day of his journey cost the lives of people whose only hope arose from their belief in the Clave; and the Clave was false. He drove his friends into movement with a rage which made the nerves of his right arm ache as if his fingers could feel the hot burden of his ring. The companions went forward like lonely derelicts, separated from each other by the downpour.

  And when at last the storm broke, opening a rift of clear sky across the east, there against the horizon stood the lorn stump of Coercri’s lighthouse. Upraised like a stonework forearm from which the fist had been cut away, it defied weather and desuetude as if it were the last gravestone of the Unhomed.

  Giants who had loved laughter and children and fidelity, and had been slaughtered in their dwellings because they had not chosen to defend themselves.

  As the rain hissed away into the west, Covenant could hear waves pounding the base of The Grieve, A line of gray ocean lay beyond the rim of the cliff; and above it, a few hardy terns had already taken flight after the storm, crying like the damned.

  He advanced until he could see the dead city.

  Its back was toward him; Coercri faced the Sea. The Unhomed had honeycombed the sheer cliff above the breakers so that their city confronted the east and hope. Only three entrances marked the rear of The Grieve, three tunnels opening the rock like gullets, forever gaping in granite sorrow over the blow which had reft them of habitation and meaning.

  “Thomas Covenant.” The First was at his side, with Pitchwife and Seadreamer behind her. “Giantfriend.” She held her voice like a broadsword at rest, unthreatening, but ready for combat. “You have spoken of Giants and jheherrin; and in our haste, we did not question that which we did not understand. And we have waited in patience for the other tale of which you gave promise. But now we must ask. This place is clearly Giant-wrought—clearly the handiwork of our people. Such craft is the blood and bone of Home to us. About it we could not be mistaken.”

  Her tone tightened. “But this place which you name The Grieve has been empty for many centuries. And the jheherrin of which you spoke are also a tale many centuries old. Yet you are human—more short-lived than any other people of the Earth. How is it possible that you have known Giants?”

  Covenant grimaced; he had no room in his heart for that question. “Where I come from,” he muttered, “time moves differently. I’ve never been here before. But I knew Saltheart Foamfollower. Maybe better than I knew myself. Three and a half thousand years ago.” Then abruptly the wrench of pain in his chest made him gasp. Three and a half—! It was too much—a gulf so deep it might have no bottom. How could he hope to make restitution across so many years?

  Clenching himself to keep from panting, he started down the slope toward the central tunnel, the main entrance to Coercri.

  The clouds had withdrawn westward, uncovering the sun. It shone almost directly into the stone passage, showed him his way to the cliff-face. He strode the tunnel as if he meant to hurl himself from the edge when he reached it. But Brinn and Hergrom flanked him, knowing what he knew. His companions followed him in silence, hushed as if he were leading them into a graveyard hallowed by old blood. Formally they entered The Grieve.

  At its end, the tunnel gave onto a rampart cut into the eastmost part of the cliff. To the north and south, Coercri curved away, as if from the blunt prow of the city. From that vantage, Covenant was able to see all The Grieve outstretched on either hand. It was built vertically, level after level of ramparts down the precipice; and the tiers projected or receded to match the contours of the rock. As a result, the city front for nearly a thousand feet from cliff edge to base had a knuckled aspect, like hands knotted against the weather and the eroding Sea.

  This appearance was emphasized by the salt deposits of the centuries. The guard walls of the lower ramparts wore gray-white knurs as massive as travertine; and even the highest levels were marked like the mottling of caducity, the accumulated habit of grief.

  Behind the ramparts, level after level, were doorways into private quarters and public halls, workshops and kitchens, places for songs and stories and Giantclaves. And at the foot of the cliff, several heavy stone piers stood out fro
m the flat base which girdled the city. Most of these had been chewed to ruins; but, near the center of Coercri, two piers and the levee between them had endured. Combers rolling in the aftermath of the storm beat up the levee like frustration and obstinance, determined to break the piers, breach the rock, assail Coercri, even if the siege took the whole life of the Earth to succeed.

  Considering the city, the First spoke as if she did not wish to show that she was moved. “Here is a habitation, in good sooth—a dwelling fit for Giants. Such work our people do not lightly undertake or inconsiderately perform. Perhaps the Giants of this place knew that they were lost to Home. But they were not lost to themselves. They have given pride to all their people.” Her voice held a faint shimmer like the glow of hot iron.

  And Pitchwife lifted up his head as if he could not contain his wildness, and sang like a cry of recognition across the ages:

  “We are the Giants,

  born to sail,

  and bold to go wherever dreaming goes.”

  Covenant could not bear to listen. Not lost to themselves. No. Not until the end, until it killed them. He, too, could remember songs. Now we are Unhomed, bereft of root and kith and kin. Gripping his passions with both hands to control them, restrain them for a little while yet, he moved away along the rampart.

  On the way, he forced himself to look into some of the rooms and halls, like a gesture of duty to the dead.

  All the stone of the chambers—chairs, utensils, tables—was intact, though every form of wood or fiber had long since fallen away. But the surfaces were scarred with salt: whorls and swirls across the floors; streaks down the walls; encrustations over the bed frames; spontaneous slow patterns as lovely as frost-work and as corrosive as guilt. Dust or cobwebs could not have articulated more eloquently the emptiness of The Grieve.

  Impelled by his private urgency, Covenant returned to the center of the city. With his companions trailing behind him, he took a crooked stairway which descended back into the cliff, then toward the Sea again. The stairs were made for Giants; he had to half-leap down them awkwardly, and every landing jolted his heart. But the daylight had begun to fade, and he was in a hurry. He went down three levels before he looked into more rooms.