The Wounded Land (33 page)

“I must,” he responded; but his words were directed toward the eh-Brand. “No other purpose remains to me. I must see the lies of the Rede answered. Throughout all the generations of the Sunbane, the Riders have taken blood in the name of the Rede. Now they must be required to speak the truth.”

Linden nodded, bent her attention on Hollian as the eh-Brand absorbed his argument, hunted for a reply. After a moment, she said slowly, holding his gaze, “In the
aliantha—
if in no other way—I have been given cause to misdoubt the Rede. And Sivit na-Mhoram-wist sought my death, though it was plain for all to see that I was of great benefit to Crystal Stonedown. If you follow ur-Lord Covenant in the name of truth, I will accompany you.” At once, she turned to Linden. “But I will not enter Andelain. That I will not do.”

Linden acknowledged this proviso. “All right. Let’s go.” She had been too long away from Covenant; her anxiety for him tightened all her muscles. But one last requirement held her back. “Sunder,” she said deliberately. “Thanks.”

Her gratitude seemed to startle him. But then he replied with a mute bow. In that gesture, they understood each other.

Leaving the knapsack and the raft to the Stonedownors, Linden dove into the water and went after Covenant.

She found him resting on a sand-spit beyond a bend in the River. He looked weary and abandoned, as if he had not expected her to come. But when she pulled herself out of the water near him, shook her eyes clear, she could see the relief which lay half-hidden behind his convalescence and his unkempt beard.

“Are you alone?”

“No. They’re coming. Sunder talked her into it.”

He did not respond. Lowering his head to his knees, he hid his face as if he did not want to admit how intensely he felt that he had been reprieved.

Shortly Sunder and Hollian swam into view; and soon the companions were on their way downriver again. Covenant rode the current in silence, with his gaze always fixed ahead. And Linden, too, remained still, trying to gather up the scattered pieces of her privacy. She felt acutely vulnerable, as if any casual word, any light touch, could drive her to the edges of her own secrets. She did not know how to recollect her old autonomy. Through the day, she could feel the sun of pestilence impending over her as she swam; and her life seemed to be composed of threats against which she had no protection.

Then, late in the afternoon, the River began to run straight into the east, and the terrain through which it flowed underwent a dramatic change. Steep hills lay ahead on both sides like poised antitheses. Those on the right were rocky and barren—a desolation unlike the wilderland of the desert sun. Linden saw at once that they were always dead, that no sun of fertility ever alleviated their detrition. Some ancient and concentrated ruin had blasted their capacity for life long ago, before the Sunbane ever came upon them.

But the hills on the left were a direct contradiction. The power with which they reached her senses sent a shock through all her nerves.

North of the Mithil lay a lush region untouched by stress or wrong. The stands of elm and Gilden which crowned the boundary were naturally tall and vividly healthy; no fertile sun had aggravated their growth, no sun of pestilence had corroded their strong wood and clean sap. The grass sweeping away in long greenswards from the riverbank was pristine with
aliantha
and amaryllis and buttercups. An analystic air blew from these hills, forever sapid and virginal.

The demarcation between this region and the surrounding terrain was as clear as a line drawn in the dirt; at that border, the Sunbane ended and loveliness began. On the riverbank, like a marker and ward to the hills, stood an old oak, gnarled and somber, wearing long shrouds of bryony like a cloak of power—a hoary majesty untrammeled by desert or rot. It forbade and welcomed, according to the spirit of those who approached.

“Andelain,” Covenant whispered thickly, as if he wanted to sing, and could not unclose his throat. “Oh, Andelain.”

But Hollian gazed on the Hills with unmitigated abhorrence. Sunder glowered at them as if they posed a danger he could not identify.

And Linden, too, could not share Covenant’s gladness. Andelain touched her like the taste of
aliantha
embodied in the Land. It unveiled itself to her particular percipience with a visionary intensity. It was as hazardous as a drug which could kill or cure, according to the skill of the physician who used it.

Fear and desire tore at her. She had felt the Sunbane too personally, had exposed herself too much in Covenant. She wanted loveliness as if her soul were starving for it. But Hollian’s dread was entirely convincing. Andelain’s emanations felt as fatal as prophecy against Linden’s face. She saw intuitively that the Hills could bereave her of herself as absolutely as any wrong. She had no ability to gauge or control the potency of this drug. Impossible that ordinary trees and grass could articulate so much might! She was already engaged in a running battle against madness. Hollian had said that Andelain drove people mad.

No, she repeated to herself. Not again. Please.

By mute consent, she and her companions stopped for the night among the ruins opposite the oak. A peculiar spell was on them, wrapping them within themselves. Covenant gazed, entranced, at the shimmer of health. But Hollian’s revulsion did not waver. Sunder carried distrust in the set of his shoulders. And Linden could not shake her senses free of the deadness of the southern hills. The waste of this region was like a shadow cast by Andelain, a consequence of power. It affected her as if it demonstrated the legitimacy of fear.

Early in the evening, Hollian pricked her palm with the point of her dirk, and used the blood to call up a slight green flame from her
lianar
. When she was done, she announced that the morrow would bring a fertile sun. But Linden was locked within her own apprehensions, and hardly heard the eh-Brand.

When she arose in the first gray of dawn with her companions, she said to Covenant, “I’m not going with you.”

The crepuscular air could not conceal his surprise. “Not? Why?” When she did not answer immediately, he urged her. “Linden, this is your chance to taste something besides sickness. You’ve been so hurt by the Sunbane. Andelain can heal you.”

“No.” She tried to sound certain, but memories of her mother, of the old man’s breath, frayed her self-command. She had shared Covenant’s illness, but he had never shared his strength. “It only looks healthy. You heard Hollian. Somewhere in there, it’s cancerous.” I’ve already lost too much.

“
Cancerous?
” he demanded. “Are you losing your eyes? That is Andelain.”

She could not meet his dark stare. “I don’t know anything about Andelain. I can’t tell. It’s too powerful. I can’t stand anymore. I could lose my mind in there.”

“You could find it in there,” he returned intensely. “I keep talking about fighting the Sunbane, and you don’t know whether to believe me or not. The answer’s in there. Andelain denies the Sunbane. Even I can see that. The Sunbane isn’t omnipotent.

“Of course Andelain’s powerful,” he went on in a rush of ire and persuasion. “It has to be. But we need power. We’ve got to know how Andelain stays clear.

“I can understand Hollian. Even Sunder. The Sunbane made them what they are. It’s cruel and terrible, but it makes sense. A world full of lepers can’t automatically trust someone with good nerves. But
you
. You’re a doctor. Fighting sickness is your business.

“Linden.” His hands gripped her shoulders, forced her to look at him. His eyes were gaunt and grim, placing demands upon her as if he believed that anybody could do the things he did. As if he did not know that he owed her his life, that all his show of determination or bravery would already have come to nothing without her. “Come with me.”

In spite of his presumption, she wanted to be equal to him. But her recollections of venom were too acute to be endured. She needed to recover herself. “I can’t. I’m afraid.”

The fury in his gaze looked like grief. She dropped her eyes. After a moment, he said distantly, “I’ll be back in two or three days. It’s probably better this way. Numbness has its advantages. I probably won’t be so vulnerable to whatever’s in there. When I get back, we’ll decide what to do.”

She nodded dumbly. He released her.

The sun was rising, clothed in a cymar of emerald. When she raised her head again, he was in the River, swimming toward Andelain as if he
were capable of anything. Green-tinged light danced on the ripples of his passing. The venom was still in him.

As Thomas Covenant passed the venerable oak and began angling his way up into Andelain, he left a grieved and limping part of himself with Linden. He was still weak from the attack of the bees, and did not want to be alone. Unwillingly, almost unconsciously, he had come to depend on Linden’s presence. He felt bound to her by many cords. Some of them he knew: her courage and support; her willingness to risk herself on his behalf. But others seemed to have no name. He felt almost physically linked to her without knowing why. Her refusal to accompany him made him afraid.

Part of his fear arose from the fear of his companions; he dreaded to learn that behind its beauty Andelain was secretly chancrous. But he had been a leper for too long, was too well acquainted with cunning disease; that kind of dread could only increase his determination. Most of his trepidation sprang from Linden’s rejection, from what that decision might mean.

For most of his hopes revolved around her. Doubt eroded his previous victory in the Land. He could not shake the gnawing conviction that in choosing to buy Joan’s safety he had sold himself to the Despiser, had given up the freedom on which efficacy against Despite depended; he had felt that knife strike his chest, and knew he might fail.
The wild magic is no longer potent against me. Of your own volition you will give the white gold into my hand
. But Linden was another question. She had been chosen by the old man who had once told him to
Be true
. In their summoning, Lord Foul had betrayed no knowledge of or desire for her presence. And since then she had showed herself capable of many things. Behind her self-severity, she was beautiful. How could he not place hope in such a woman?

But now her refusal of Andelain seemed to imply that his hope was based on quicksand, that her clenched will was an articulation of cowardice rather than courage.

He understood such things. He was a leper, and lepers were taught cowardice by every hurt in all the world. If anything, her decision increased his empathy for her. But he was alone; and he knew from long and brutal experience how little he could accomplish alone. Even the apotheosis of his former power against Lord Foul would have gone for nothing without the support and laughter of Saltheart Foamfollower.

So as he climbed into Andelain, he felt that he was walking into a bereavement, a loss of comradeship, of hope, perhaps of courage, from which he might never recover.

At the hillcrest, he paused to wave at his companions. But they did not reply; they were not looking at him. Their lack of response hurt him as if they had deliberately turned their backs.

But he was a man who had always been faithful to his griefs; and the Land had become a rending and immedicable sorrow to him. He went on into Andelain because he needed health, power, knowledge. So that he could try to restore what had been lost.

Soon, however, his mood changed. For this was Andelain, as precious to his memory as his dearest friendships in the Land. In this air—ether as crisp as sempiternal spring—he could not even see the sun’s chrysoprastic aura; the sunshine contained nothing except an abundance of beauty. The grass unrolling under his feet was lush and beryl-green, freshly jeweled with dew. Woodlands extended north and east of him. Broad Gilden fondled the breeze with their wide gold leaves; stately elms fronted the azure of the sky like princes; willows
as delicate as filigree beckoned to him, inviting him into their heart-healing shade. All about the hale trunks, flowers enriched the greensward: daisies and columbine and elegant forsythia in profusion. And over everything lay an atmosphere of pristine and vibrant loveliness, as if here and in no other place lived quintessential health, nature’s pure gift to assuage the soul.

Munching
aliantha
as he passed, loping down long hillsides, bursting occasionally into wild leaps of pleasure, Thomas Covenant traveled swiftly into Andelain.

Gradually he grew calmer, became more attuned to the taintless tranquility of the Hills. Birds sang among the branches; small woodland animals darted through the trees. He did nothing to disturb them. And after he had walked for some distance, drinking in thirstily the roborant of Andelain, he returned his thoughts to his companions, to Hollian and Sunder. He felt sure now that the Hills were not cancerous, that they contained no secret and deadly ill. Such an idea had become inconceivable. But at the same time the intensity of what he saw and felt and loved increased his comprehension of the Stonedownors.

They were like lepers; all the people of the Land were like lepers. They were the victims of the Sunbane, victims of an ill for which there was no cure and no escape. Outcast from the beauty of the world. And under such conditions, the need to survive exacted harsh penalties. Nothing under the sun was as perilous to a leper as his own yearning for the kind of life, companionship, hope, denied him by his disease. That susceptibility led to despair and self-contempt, to the conviction that the outcasting of the leper was just—condign punishment for an affliction which must have been deserved.

Seen in that way, Andelain was a riving vindication of the Sunbane. The Land was not like Andelain because the people of the Land merited retribution rather than loveliness. What else could they believe, and still endure the penury of their lives? Like so many lepers, they were driven to approve their own destitution. Therefore Sunder could not trust anything which was not ruled by the Sunbane. And Hollian believed that Andelain would destroy her. They had no choice.