The Wounded Land (45 page)

He expected her to ask why he wanted an eh-Brand. Her next sentence took him by surprise.

“Sivit reported that you appeared to be ill.”

A chill spattered down his spine. Careful, he warned himself. Be careful. “Sunbane-fever,” he replied with complex dishonesty. “I was just recovering.”

“Sivit reported,” she went on, “that you were accompanied by a man and a woman. The man was a Stonedownor, but the woman appeared to be a stranger to the Land.”

Covenant clenched himself, decided to chance the truth. “They were captured by a Rider. Santonin na-Mhoram-in. I’ve been chasing them for days.”

He hoped to surprise a revelation from her; but she responded with a frown, “Santonin? He has been absent from Revelstone for many days—but I think he has taken no captives.”

“He’s got three,” rasped Covenant. “He can’t be more than two days ahead of me.”

She considered for a moment, then shook her head. “No. Had he taken your companions, he would have spoken of it through his
rukh
to the Readers. I am na-Mhoram-in. Such knowledge would not be withheld from me.”

Her words gave him a sick sense of being out of his depth—caught in a web of falsehood with no possibility of extrication. Who is lying? The Graveler of Stonemight Woodhelven? Memla? Or Santonin, so that he could keep a fragment of the Illearth Stone for himself? His inability to discern the truth hurt Covenant like vertigo. But he fought to keep his visage flat, free of nausea. “Do you think I’m making this up?”

Memla was either a consummate prevaricator or a brave woman. She met his glare and said evenly, “I think you have told me nothing concerning your true companion.” With a nod, she indicated Vain.

The Demondim-spawn had not moved a muscle since he had first come to a halt near the fire.

“He and I made a deal,” Covenant retorted. “I don’t talk about him, and he doesn’t talk about me.”

Her eyes narrowed. Slowly she said, “You are a mystery, Halfhand. You enter Crystal Stonedown with two companions. You reave Sivit of an eh-Brand. You show power. You escape. When you appear once more, swift beyond belief, your three companions are gone, replaced by this black enigma. And you demand to be trusted. Is it power which gives you such arrogance?”

Arrogance, is it? Covenant grated. I’ll show you arrogance. Defiantly he pulled the
rukh
from his belt, tossed it to her. “All right,” he snapped. “Talk to Revelstone. Tell them I’m coming. Tell them anybody who hurts my friends is going to answer for it!”

Startlement made her hesitate. She looked at the iron and back at him, debating rapidly with herself. Then she reached her decision. Reluctantly she put the
rukh
away within her robe. Straightening her black chasuble, she sighed, “As you wish.” Her gaze hardened. “If your
companions have indeed been taken to Revelstone, I will answer for their safety.”

Her decision softened his distrust. But he was still not satisfied. “Just one more thing,” he said in a quieter tone. “If Santonin was on his way to Revelstone while you were coming here, could he get past you without your knowing it?”

“Clearly,” she responded with a tired lift of her shoulders. “The Land is wide, and I am but one woman. Only the Readers know the place and state of every
rukh
. Though seven of us were sent to await you, a Rider could pass by unseen if he so chose. I rely on Din to watch and ward, but any Rider could command Din’s silence, and I would be none the wiser. Thus if you desire to believe ill of Santonin, I cannot gainsay you.

“Please yourself,” she continued in a tone of fatigue. “I am no longer young, and mistrust wearies me. I must rest.” Bending like an old woman, she seated herself near the fire. “If you are wise, you will rest also. We are threescore leagues from Revelstone—and a Courser is no palanquin.”

Covenant gazed about him, considering his situation. He felt too tight—and too trapped—to rest. But he intended to remain with Memla. He wanted the speed of her mount. She was either honest or she was not; but he would probably not learn the truth until he reached Revelstone. After a moment, he, too, sat down. Absent-mindedly, he unbound the pouch of
vitrim
from his belt, and took a small swallow.

“Do you require food or water?” she asked. “I have both.” She gestured toward the sacks near her bundle of firewood.

He shook his head. “I’ve got enough for one more day.”

“Mistrust,” Reaching into a sack, she took out a blanket and spread it on the ground. With her back to Covenant, she lay down, pulled the blanket over her shoulders like a protection against his suspicions, and settled herself for sleep.

Covenant watched her through the declining flames. He was cold with a chill which had nothing to do with the night air. Memla na-Mhoram-in challenged too many of his assumptions. He hardly cared that she cast doubt on his distrust of the Clave; he would know how to regard the Clave when he learned more about the Sunbane. But her attack on his preconceptions about Linden and Santonin left him sweating. Was Santonin some kind of rogue Rider? Was this a direct attempt by Lord Foul to lay hands on the ring? An attack similar to the possession of Joan? The lack of any answers made him groan.

If Linden were not at Revelstone, then he would need the Clave’s help to locate Santonin. And he would have to pay for that help with cooperation and vulnerability.

Yanking at his beard as if he could pull wisdom from the skin of his face, he glared at Memla’s back and groped for prescience. But he could not see past his fear that he might indeed be forced to surrender his ring.

No. Not that. Please. He gritted his teeth against his chill dread. The future was a leper’s question, and he had been taught again and again that the answer lay in single-minded dedication to the exigencies of the present. But he had never been taught how to achieve single-mindedness, how to suppress his own complex self-contradictions.

Finally he dozed. His slumber was fitful. The night was protracted by fragmentary nightmares of suicide—glimpses of a leper’s self-abandonment that terrified him because they came so close to the facts of his fate, to the manner in which he had given himself up for Joan.
Waking repeatedly, he strove to elude his dreams; but whenever he faded back toward unconsciousness, they renewed their ubiquitous grasp.

Some time before dawn, Memla roused herself. Muttering at the stiffness in her bones, she used a few faggots to restore the fire, then set a stoneware bowl Ml of water in the flames to heat. While the water warmed, she put her forehead in the dirt toward Revelstone and mumbled orisons in a language Covenant could not understand.

Vain ignored her as if he had been turned to stone.

When the water was hot enough, she used some of it to lave her hands, face, and neck. The rest she offered to Covenant. He accepted. After the night he had just spent, he needed to comfort himself somehow. While he performed what ablutions he could, she took food for breakfast from one of her sacks.

He declined her viands. True, she had done nothing to threaten him. But she was a Rider of the Clave. While he still had
vitrim
left, he was unwilling to risk her food. And also, he admitted to himself, he wanted to remind her of his distrust. He owed her at least that much candor.

She took his refusal sourly. “The night has not taught you grace,” she said. “We are four days from Revelstone, Halfhand. Perhaps you mean to live on air and dust when the liquid in your pouch fails.”

“I mean,” he articulated, “to trust you exactly as much as I have to, and no more.”

She scowled at his reply, but made no retort.

Soon dawn approached. Moving briskly now, Memla packed away her supplies. As soon as she had tied up her sacks, bound her bundles together by lengths of rope, she raised her head, and barked, “Din!”

Covenant heard the sound of hooves. A moment later, Memla’s Courser came trotting out of the dusk.

She treated it with the confidence of long familiarity. Obeying her brusque gesture, Din lowered itself to its belly. At once, she began to load the beast, heaving her burdens across the middle of its back so that they hung balanced in pairs. Then, knotting her fingers in its long hair, she pulled herself up to perch near its shoulders.

Covenant hesitated to follow. He had always been uncomfortable around horses, in part because of their strength, in part because of their distance from the ground; and the Courser was larger and more dangerous than any horse. But he had no choice. When Memla snapped at him irritably, he took his courage in both hands, and heaved himself up behind her.

Din pitched to its feet. Covenant grabbed at the hair urgently to keep himself from falling. A spasm of vertigo made everything reel as Memla turned Din to face the sunrise.

The sun broke the horizon in brown heat. Almost at once, haze began to ripple the distance, distorting all the terrain. His memories of the aid the Waynhim had given him conflicted with his vertigo and with his surprise at Memla’s immunity.

Answering his unspoken question, she said, “Din is a creature of the Sunbane. His body wards us as stone does.” Then she swung her beast in the direction of Revelstone.

Din’s canter was unexpectedly smooth; and its hair gave Covenant a secure hold. He began to recover his poise. The ground still seemed fatally far away; but it no longer appeared to bristle with falling. Ahead of him, Memla sat cross-legged near the Courser’s shoulders, trusting her hands to catch her whenever she was jostled off balance. After a while, he followed her example. Keeping both fists constantly clutched in Din’s coat, he made himself as secure as he could.

Memla had not offered Vain a seat. She had apparently decided to treat him exactly as he treated her. But Vain did not need to be carried by any beast. He loped behind Din effortlessly and gave no sign that he was in any way aware of what he was doing.

Covenant rode through the morning in silence, clinging to the Courser’s back and sipping
vitrim
whenever the heat made him dizzy. But when Memla resumed their journey after a brief rest at noon, he felt a desire to make her talk. He wanted information; the wilderness of his ignorance threatened him. Stiffly he asked her to explain the Rede of the Clave.

“The Rede!” she ejaculated over her shoulder. “Halfhand, the time before us is reckoned in days, not turnings of the moon.”

“Summarize,” he retorted. “If you don’t want me dead, then you want my help. I need to know what I’m dealing with.”

She was silent.

Deliberately he rasped, “In other words, you
have
been lying to me.”

Memla leaned abruptly forward, hawked and spat past Din’s shoulder. But when she spoke, her tone was subdued, almost chastened. “The Rede is of great length and complexity, comprising all the accumulated knowledge of the Clave in reference to life in the Land, and to survival under the Sunbane. It is the task of the Riders to share this knowledge throughout the Land, so that Stonedown and Woodhelven may endure.”

Right, Covenant muttered. And to kidnap people for their blood.

“But little of this knowledge would have worth to you,” she went on. “You have sojourned scatheless under the Sunbane. What skills it to tell you of the Rede?

“Yet you desire comprehension. Halfhand, there is only one matter which the bearer of the white ring need understand. It is the triangle.” She took the
rukh
from her robe, showed it to him over her shoulder. “The Three Corners of Truth. The foundation of all our service.”

To the rhythm of Din’s strides, she began to sing:

When she paused, he said, “What do you mean—‘three the days’? Isn’t the Sunbane accelerating? Didn’t each sun formerly last for four or five days, or even more?”

“Yes,” she replied impatiently, “beyond doubt. But the soothreaders have ever foretold that the Clave would hold at three—that the generations-long increase of our power and the constant mounting of the Sunbane would meet and match at three days, producing balance. Thus we hope now that in some way we may contrive to tilt the balance to our side, sending the Sunbane toward decline. Therefore the na-Mhoram desires your aid.

“But I was speaking of the Three Corners of Truth,” she continued with asperity before Covenant could interrupt again. “This knowledge at least you do require. On these three facts the Clave stands, and every village lives.

“First, there is no power in Land or life comparable to the Sunbane. In might and efficacy, the Sunbane surpasses all other puissance utterly.

“Second, there is no mortal who can endure the Sunbane. Without great knowledge and cunning, none can hope to endure from one sun to the next. And without opposition to the Sunbane, all life is doomed. Swift or slow, the Sunbane will wreak entire ruin.

“Third, there is no power sufficient to oppose the Land’s doom, except power which is drawn from the Sunbane itself. Its might must be reflected against it. No other hope exists. Therefore does the Clave shed the blood of the Land, for blood is the key to the Sunbane. If we do not unlock that power, there will be no end to our perishing.

“Hear you, Halfhand?” Memla demanded. “I doubt not that in your sojourn you have met much reviling of the Clave. Despite all our labor, Stonedown and Woodhelven must believe that we exact their blood for pleasure or self.” To Covenant’s ears, her acidity was the gall of a woman who instinctively abhorred her conscious convictions. “Be not misled! The cost is sore to us. But we do not flinch from it because it is our sole means to preserve the Land. If you must cast blame, cast it upon a-Jeroth, who incurred the just wrath of the Master—and upon the ancient betrayers, Berek and his ilk, who leagued with a-Jeroth.”

Covenant wanted to protest. As soon as she mentioned Berek as a betrayer, her speech lost its persuasiveness. He had never known Berek Halfhand; the Lord-Fatherer was already a legend when Covenant had entered the Land. But his knowledge of the effects of Berek’s life was nearly two score centuries more recent than Memla’s. Any set of beliefs which counted Berek a betrayer was founded on a lie; and so any conclusions drawn from that foundation were false. But he kept his protest silent because he could conceive of no way to demonstrate its accuracy. No way short of victory over the Sunbane.