The companions launched the bundle of wood. The sting of the water burned Covenant's breath out of his lungs; but he fought the cold and the current and the weight of his boots with his old leper's intransigence, and survived the first shock.
Then the rain commenced. During the night, the River had become less violent; it had washed itself free of floating brush and trees and had risen above the worst of its turbulence. But the rain was more severe, had more wind behind it. Gusts drove the raindrops until they hit like flurries of hail. Torrents lashed into the water with a hot, scorching sound.
The downpour rapidly became torment for the companions. They could not escape from the sodden and insidious cold. From time to time, Covenant glimpsed a burst of lightning in the distance, rupturing the dark; but the unremitting slash of rain into the Mithil drowned out any thunder. Soon his muscles grew so leaden, his nerves so numb, that he could no longer grip the raft. He jammed his hand in among the branches, hooked his elbow over one of the bindings, and survived.
Somehow, the day passed. At last, a line of clear sky broke open along the east. Gradually, the rain and wind eased. More by chance than intent, the companions gained a small cove of gravel and sand in the west bank. As they drew their raft out of the water, Covenant's legs failed, and he collapsed face-down on the pebbles as if he would never be able to move again.
Linden panted, “Firewood.” He could hear the stumbling scrunch of her shoes. Sunder also seemed to be moving.
Her groan jerked up his head, heaved him to his hands and knees. Following her wounded stare, he saw what had dismayed her.
There was no firewood. The rain had washed the gravel clean. And the small patch of shore was impenetrably surrounded by a tangle of briar with long barbed thorns. Exhaustion and tears thickened her voice as she moaned, “What are we going to do?”
Covenant tried to speak, but was too weak to make any sound.
The Graveller locked his weary knees, mustered a scant smile. “The ur-Lord has granted permission. Be of good heart. Some little warmth will ease us greatly.”
Lurching to his feet, Covenant watched blankly as Sunder approached the thickest part of the briar.
The muscles of his jaw knotted and released irrhythmically, like a faltering heartbeat. But he did not hesitate. Reaching his left hand in among the thorns, he pressed his forearm against one of the barbs and tore a cut across his skin.
Covenant was too stunned by fatigue and cold and responsibility to react. Linden flinched, but did not move.
With a shudder, Sunder smeared the welling blood onto his hands and face, then took out his orcrest. Holding the Sunstone so that his cut dripped over it, he began to chant.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Covenant trembled in his bones, thinking that without sunlight Sunder would not be able to succeed. But suddenly a red glow awakened in the translucent stone. Power the colour of Sunder's blood shafted in the direction of the sun.
The sun had already set behind a line of hills, but the Sunstone was unaffected by the intervening terrain; Sunder's vermeil shaft struck toward the sun's hidden position. Some distance from the cove, the shaft disappeared into the dark base of the hills; but its straight, bright power was not hindered.
Still chanting, Sunder moved his hands so that the shaft encountered a thick briar stem. Almost at once, flame burst from the wood.
When the stem was well afire, he shifted his power to the nearest branches.
The briar was wet and alive; but his shaft lit new stems and twigs easily, and the tangle was so dense that the flames fed each other. Soon he had created a self-sustaining bonfire.
He fell silent; and the blood-beam vanished. Tottering weakly, he went to the River to wash himself and the Sunstone.
Covenant and Linden hunched close to the blaze. Twilight was deepening around them. At their backs, the Mithil sounded like the respiration of the sea. In the firelight, Covenant could see that her lips were blue with cold, her face drained of blood. Her eyes reflected the flames as if they were devoid of any other vision. Grimly, he hoped that she would find somewhere the desire or the resolution to endure.
Shortly, Sunder returned, carrying his sack of ussusimiel. Linden bestirred herself to tend his arm; but he declined quietly. “I am a Graveller,” he murmured. “Such work would not have fallen to me, were I slow of healing.” He raised his forearm, showed her that the bleeding had already stopped. Then he sat down near the flames, and began to prepare a ration of melons for supper.
The three of them ate in silence, settled themselves for the night in silence. Covenant was seeking within himself for the courage to face another day under the sun of rain. He guessed that his companions were doing the same. They wore their private needs like cerements, and slept in isolation.
The next day surpassed Covenant's worst expectations. As clouds sealed the Plains, the wind mounted to rabid proportions, Whipping the River into froth and flailing rain like the barbs of a scourge. Lightning and thunder bludgeoned each other across the heavens. In flashes, the sky became as lurid as the crumbling of a firmament, as loud as an avalanche. The raft rode the current like dead wood, entirely at the mercy of the Mithil.
Covenant thrashed and clung in constant fear of the lightning, expecting it to strike the raft, to fry him and his companions. But that killing blow never fell. Late in the day, the lightning itself granted them an unexpected reprieve. Downriver from them, a blue-white bolt sizzled into a stand of prodigious eucalyptus. One of the trees burned like a torch.
Sunder yelled at his companions. Together, they heaved the raft toward the bank, then left the River and hastened to the trees. They could not approach the burning eucalyptus; but when a blazing branch fell nearby, they used other dead wood to drag the branch out from under the danger of the tree. Then they fed brush, broken tree limbs, eucalyptus leaves as big as scythes, to the flames until the blaze was hot enough to resist the rain.
The burning tree and the campfire shed heat like a benediction. The ground was thick with leaves which formed the softest bed Covenant and his companions had had for days. Sometime after sunset, the tree collapsed, but it fell away from them; after that they were able to rest without concern.
Early in the dawn, Sunder roused Covenant and Linden so that they would have time to break their fast before the sun rose. The Graveller was tense and distracted, anticipating a change in the Sunbane. When they had eaten, they went down to the riverbank and found a stretch of fiat rock where they could stand to await the morning. Through the gaunt and blackened trees, they saw the sun cast its first glance over the horizon.
It appeared baleful, fiery and red; it wore coquelicot like a crown of thorns, and cast a humid heat entirely unlike the fierce intensity of the desert sun. Its corona seemed insidious and detrimental. Linden's eyes flinched at the sight. And Sunder's face was strangely blanched. He made an instinctive warding gesture with both hands. “Sun of pestilence,” he breathed; and his tone winced. “Ah, we have been fortunate. Had this sun come upon us after the desert sun, or the fertile-” The thought died in his throat. “But now, after a sun of rain-” He sighed. “Fortunate, indeed.”
“How so?” asked Covenant. He did not understand the attitude of his companions. His bones yearned for the relief of one clear clean day. “What does this sun do?”
“Do?” Sunder gritted. “What harm does it not? It is the dread and torment of the Land. Still water becomes stagnant. Growing things rot and crumble. All who eat or drink of that which has not been shaded are afflicted with a disease which few survive and none cure. And the insects-!”
“He's right,” Linden whispered with her mouth full of dismay, “Oh, my God.”
“It is the Mithil River which makes us fortunate, for it will not stagnate. Until another desert sun, it will continue to flow from its springs, and from the rain. And it will ward us in other ways also.” The reflected red in Sunder's eyes made him look like a cornered animal. “Yet I cannot behold such a sun without fai
ntheartedness. My people hide in their homes at such a time and pray for a sun of two days. I ache to be hidden also. I am homeless and small against the wideness of the world, and in all the Land I fear a sun of pestilence more than any other thing.”
Sunder's frank apprehension affected Covenant like guilt. To answer it, he said, “You're also the only reason we're still alive.”
“Yes,” the Graveller responded as if he were listening to his own thoughts rather than to Covenant.
“Yes!” Covenant snapped. “And someday every Stonedown is going to know that this Sunbane is not the only way to live. When that day comes, you're going to be just about the only person in the Land who can teach them anything.”
Sunder was silent for a time. Then he asked distantly, “What will I teach them?”
“To remake the Land.” Deliberately, Covenant included Linden in his passion. “It used to be a place of such health and loveliness-if you saw it, it would break your heart.” His voice gave off gleams of rage and love. “That can be true again.” He glared at his companions, daring them to doubt him.
Linden covered her gaze; but Sunder turned and met Covenant's ire. “Your words have no meaning. No man or woman can remake the Land. It is in the hands of the Sunbane, for good or ill. Yet this I say to you,” he grated when Covenant began to protest. “Make the attempt.” Abruptly, he lowered his eyes. “I can no longer bear to believe that Nassic my father was a mere witless fool.” Retrieving his sack of melons, he went brusquely and tied it to the centre of the raft.
“I hear you,” Covenant muttered. He felt an unexpected desire for violence. “I hear you.”
Linden touched his arm. “Come on.” She did not meet his glance. “It's going to be dangerous here.”
He followed mutely as she and Sunder launched the raft.
Soon they were out in the centre of the Mithil, riding the current under a red-wreathed sun and a cerulean sky. The warmer air made the water almost pleasant; and the pace of the River had slowed during the night, easing the management of the raft. Yet the sun's aurora nagged at Covenant. Even to his superficial sight, it looked like a secret threat, mendacious and bloodthirsty. Because of it, the warm sunlight and clear sky seemed like concealment for an ambush.
His companions shared his trepidation. Sunder swam with a dogged wariness, as if he expected an attack at any moment. And Linden's manner betrayed an innominate anxiety more acute than anything she had shown since the first day of the fertile sun.
But nothing occurred to justify this vague dread. The morning passed easily as the water lost its chill. The air filled with flies, gnats, midges, like motes of vehemence in the red-tinged light; but such things did not prevent the companions from stopping whenever they saw aliantha. Slowly, Covenant began to relax. Noon had passed before he noticed that the River was becoming rougher.
During the days of rain, the Mithil had turned directly northward; and now it grew unexpectedly broader, more troubled. Soon, he descried what was happening. The raft was moving rapidly toward the confluence of the Mithil and another river.
Their speed left the companions no time for choice. Sunder shouted, “Hold!” Linden thrust her hair away from her face, tightened her grip. Covenant jammed his numb fingers in among the branches of the raft. Then the Mithil swept them spinning and tumbling into the turbulent centre of the confluence.
The raft plunged end over end. Covenant felt himself yanked through the turmoil, and fought to hold his breath. But almost at once the current rushed the raft in another direction. Gasping for air, he shook water from his eyes and saw that now they were travelling north-eastward.
For more than a league, the raft seemed to hurtle down the watercourse. But finally the new stream eased somewhat between its banks. Covenant started to catch his breath.
“What was that?” Linden panted.
Covenant searched his memory. “Must have been the Black River.” From Garroting Deep. And from Melenkurion Skyweir, where Elena had broken the Law of Death to summon Kevin Landwaster from his grave, and had died herself as a result. Covenant flinched at the recollection, and at the thought that perhaps none of the Land's ancient forests had survived the Sunbane. Gritting himself, he added, “It separates the South and Centre Plains.”
“Yes,” said the Graveller. “And now we must choose. Revelstone lies north of northwest from us. The Mithil no longer shortens our way.”
Covenant nodded. But the seine of his remembering brought up other things as well. “That's all right. It won't increase the distance.” He knew vividly where the Mithil River would take him. “Anyway, I don't want to walk under this sun.”
Andelain.
He shivered at the suddenness of his hope and anxiety. If aliantha could endure the Sunbane, could not Andelain also preserve itself? Or had the chief gem and glory of the Land already been brought to ruin?
That thought outweighed his urgency to reach Revelstone. He estimated that they were about eighty leagues from Mithil Stonedown. Surely they had outdistanced any immediate pursuit. They could afford this digression.
He noticed that Sunder regarded him strangely. But the Graveller's face showed no desire at all to brave the sun of pestilence afoot. And Linden seemed to have lost the will to care where the River carried them.
By turns, they began trying to get some rest after the strain of the confluence.
For a time, Covenant's awareness of his surroundings was etiolated by memories of Andelain. But then a flutter of colour almost struck his face, snatching his attention to the air over his head. The atmosphere thronged with bugs of all kinds. Butterflies the size of his open hand, with wings like flakes of chiaroscuro, winked and skimmed erratically over the water; huge horseflies whined past him; clusters of gnats swirled like mirages. They marked the air with constant hums and buzzings, like a rumour of distant violence. The sound made him uneasy. Itching skirled down his spine.
Sunder showed no specific anxiety. But Linden's agitation mounted. She seemed inexplicably cold; her teeth chattered until she locked her jaws to stop them. She searched the sky and the riverbanks apprehensively, looking -
The air became harder to breathe, humid and dangerous.
Covenant was momentarily deaf to the swelling hum. But then he heard it-a raw thick growling like the anger of bees.
Bees!
The noise augered through him. He gaped in dumb horror as a swarm dense enough to obscure the sun rose abruptly out of the brush along the River and came snarling toward the raft.
“Heaven and Earth!” Sunder gasped.
Linden thrashed the water, clutched at Covenant. “Raver!” Her voice scaled into a shriek. “Oh, my God!”
Ten: Vale of Crystal
THE presence of the Raver, lurid and tangible, burned through Linden Avery's nerves like a discharge of lightning, stunning her. She could not move. Covenant thrust her behind him, turned to face the onslaught. Her cry drowned as water splashed over her.
Then the swarm hit. Black-yellow bodies as long as her thumb clawed the air, smacked into the River as if they had been driven mad. She felt the Raver all around her-a spirit of ravage and lust threshing viciously among the bees.
Impelled by fear, she dove.
The water under the raft was clear; she saw Sunder diving near her. He gripped his knife and the Sunstone as if he intended to fight the swarm by hand.
Covenant remained on the surface. His legs and body writhed; he must have been swatting wildly at the bees.
At once, her fear changed directions, became fear for him. She lunged toward him, grabbed one ankle, heaved him downward as hard as she could. He sank suddenly in her grasp. Two bees still clung to his face. In a fury of revulsion, she slapped them away. Then she had to go up for air.
Sunder rose nearby. As he moved, he wielded his knife. Blood streamed from his left forearm.
She split the surface, gulped air, and dove again.
The Graveller did not. Through the distortion of the water, she watched red
sunfire raging from the orcrest. The swarm concentrated darkly around Sunder. His legs scissored, lifting his shoulders. Power burst from him, igniting the swarm; bees flamed like hot spangles.
An instant later, the attack ended.
Linden broke water again, looked around rapidly. But the Raver was gone. Burnt bodies littered the face of the Mithil.
Sunder hugged the raft, gasping as if the exertion of so much force had ruptured something in his chest.
She ignored him. Her swift scan showed her that Covenant had not regained the surface.
Snatching air into her lungs, she went down for him.
She wrenched herself in circles, searching the water. At first, she could find nothing. Then she spotted him. He was some distance away across the current, struggling upward. His movements were desperate. In spite of the interference of the River, she could see that he was not simply desperate for air.
With all the strength of her limbs, she swam after him.
He reached the surface; but his body went on thrashing as if he were still assailed by bees.
She raised her head into the air near him, surged to his aid.
“Hellfire!” he spat like an ague of fear or agony. Water streamed through his hair and his ragged beard, as if he had been immersed in madness. His hands slapped at his face.
“Covenant!” Linden shouted.
He did not hear her. Wildly, he fought invisible bees, pounded his face. An inchoate cry tore through his throat.
“Sunder!” she panted. “Help me!” Ducking around Covenant, she caught him across the chest, began to drag him toward the bank. The sensation of his convulsions sickened her; but she bit down her nausea, wrestled him through the River.
The Graveller came limping after her, dragging the raft. His mien was tight with pain. A thin smear of blood stained his lips.
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