The Wounded Land t2cotc-1 Page 6

  Her guess at what he was doing galvanized her. Fear for him broke through her personal apprehension, sent her hurrying around the corner of the house in pursuit.

  His summoner had led him away from the highway, away from the house into the woods. Linden could hear them in the brush; without light, they were unable to move quietly. As her eyes adjusted, she glimpsed them ahead of her, flickering like shadows in and out of the variegated dark. She followed them.

  They travelled blindly through the woods, over hills and along valleys. They used no path; Linden had the impression that they were cutting as straight as a plumb line toward their destination. And as they moved, the night seemed to mount around her, growing steadily more hostile as her trepidation increased. The trees and brush became malevolent, as if she were passing into another wood altogether, a place of hazard and cruel intent.

  Then a hill lay across their way. Covenant and his summoner ascended, disappeared over the crest in a strange flare of orange light. It picked them out of the dark, then quenched them like an instant of translation. Warned by that brief gleam, Linden climbed slowly. The keening of her nerves seemed loud in the blackness. The last few yards she crossed on her hands and knees, keeping herself within the cover of the underbrush.

  As her head crested the hill, she was struck by a blaze of light. Fire invisible a foot away burst in her face as if she had just penetrated the boundary of dreams. For an instant, she was blinded by the light, paralyzed by the silence. The night swallowed all sound, leaving the air empty of life.

  Blinking furiously, she peered past the hillcrest.

  Beyond her lay a deep barren hollow. Its slopes were devoid of grass, brush, trees, as if the soil had been scoured by acid.

  A bonfire burned at the bottom of the hollow. Its flames sprang upward like lust, writhed like madness; but it made no noise. Seeing it, Linden felt that she had been stricken deaf. Impossible that such a fire could blaze in silence.

  Near the fire stretched a rough plane of native rock, perhaps ten feet across. A large triangle had been painted on it in red-colour as crimson as fresh blood.

  Joan lay on her back within the triangle. She did not move, appeared to be unconscious; only the slow lifting of her chest against her nightgown showed that she was alive.

  People clustered around her, twenty or thirty of them. Men, women, children-all dressed in habiliments of burlap; all masked with grey as if they had been wallowing in ashes. They were as gaunt as icons of hunger. They gazed out of eyes as dead as if the minds behind their orbs had been extirpated-eyes which had been dispossessed of every vestige of will or spirit. Even the children stood like puppets and made no sound.

  Their faces were turned toward a place on Linden's left.

  Toward Thomas Covenant.

  He stood halfway down the hillside, confronting the fire across the barrenness of the hollow. His shoulders hunched; his hands were fists at his sides, and his head was thrust combatively forward. His chest heaved as if he were full of denunciations.

  Nobody moved, spoke, blinked. The air was intense with silence like concentrated coercion.

  Abruptly, Covenant grated through his teeth, “I'm here.” The clench of his throat made each word sound like a self-inflicted wound. “Let her go.”

  A movement snatched Linden's attention back to the bottom of the hollow. A man brawnier than the rest changed positions, took a stance on the rock at the point of the triangle, above Joan's head. He raised his arms, revealing a long, curved dagger gripped in his right fist. In a shrill voice like a man on the verge of ecstasy, he shouted, “It is time! We are the will of the Master of life and death! This is the hour of retribution and cleansing and blood! Let us open the way for the Master's presence!”

  The night sucked his voice out of the air, left in its place a stillness as sharp as a cut. For a moment, nothing happened.

  Covenant took a step downward, then jerked to a halt.

  A woman near the fire shambled forward. Linden nearly gasped aloud as she recognized the woman who had stood on the steps of the courthouse, warning people to repent. With her three children behind her, she approached the blaze.

  She bowed to it like a dead woman.

  Blankly, she put her right hand into the flames.

  A shriek of pain rent the night. She recoiled from the fire, fell in agony to the bare ground.

  A red quivering ran through the flames like a spasm of desire. The fire seemed to mount as if it fed on the woman's pain.

  Linden's muscles bunched, ached to hurl her to her feet. She wanted to shout her horror, stop this atrocity. But her limbs were locked. Images of desperation or evil froze her where she crouched. All these people were like Joan.

  Then the woman regained her feet and stood as dumbly as if the nerves to her burned hand had been severed. Her gaze returned to Covenant like a compulsion, exerting its demand against him.

  The oldest of her children took her place at the bonfire.

  No! Linden cried, striving uselessly to break the silence.

  The young boy bowed, thrust his emaciated arm into the blaze.

  His wail broke Linden's will, left her panting in helpless abomination. She could not move, could not look away. Loathings for which she had no name mastered her.

  The boy's younger sister did what he had done, as if his agony meant nothing to her. And the third waif followed in turn, surrendering her flesh to harm like lifeless tissue animated solely for immolation.

  Then Linden would have moved. The rigid abhorrence of Covenant's stance showed that he would have moved. But the fire stopped them, held them. At every taste of flesh, lust flared through it; flames raged higher.

  A figure began to take shape in the heart of the blaze.

  More people moved to sacrifice their hands. As they did so, the figure solidified. It was indistinct in the flames; but the glaring red outlined a man in a flowing robe. He stood blood-limned with his arms folded across his powerful chest-created by pain out of fire and self-abandonment.

  The worshipper with the knife sank to his knees, cried out in exaltation, “Master!”

  The figure's eyes were like fangs, carious and yellow; and they raged venomously out of the flames. Their malignance cowed Linden like a personal assault on her sanity, her conception of life. They were rabid and deliberate, like voluntary disease, fetid corruption. Nothing in all her life had readied her to witness such palpable hate.

  Across the stillness, she heard Covenant gasp in fury, “Foul! Even children?” But his wrath could not penetrate the dread which paralyzed her. For her, the fiery silence was punctuated only by the screaming of the burned.

  Then the moon began to rise opposite her. A rim as white as bone crested the hill, looked down into the hollow like a leer.

  The man with the knife came to his feet. Again he raised his arms, brandished his dagger. His personal transport was approaching its climax. In a shout like a moan, he cried, “Now is the hour of apocalypse! The Master has come! Doom is at hand for those who seek to thwart His will. Now we will witness vengeance against sin and life, we who have watched and waited and suffered in His name. Here we fulfil the vision that was given to us. We have touched the fire, and we have been redeemed!” His voice rose until he was shrieking like the burned. “Now we will bring all wickedness to blood and eternal torment!”

  He's mad. Linden clung to that thought, fought to think of these people as fanatics, driven wild by destitution and fear. They're all crazy. This is impossible. But she could not move.

  And Covenant did not move. She yearned for him to do something, break the trance somehow, rescue Joan, save Linden herself from her extremity. But he remained motionless, watching the fire as if he were trapped between savagery and helplessness.

  The figure in the blaze stirred. His eyes focused the flames like twin scars of malice, searing everything with his contempt. His right arm made a gesture as final as a sentence of execution.

  At once, the brawny man dropped to his kne
es. Bending over Joan, he bared her throat. She lay limp under him, frail and lost. The skin of her neck seemed to gleam in the firelight like a plea for help.

  Trembling as if he were rapturous or terrified, the man set his blade against Joan's white throat.

  Now the people in the hollow stared emptily at his hands. They appeared to have lost all interest in Covenant. Their silence was appalling. The man's hands shook.

  “Stop!”

  Covenant's shout scourged the air.

  “You've done enough! Let her go!”

  The baleful eyes in the fire swung at him, nailed him with denigration. The worshipper at Joan's throat stared whitely upward. “Release her?” he croaked. “Why?”

  “Because you don't have to do this!” Anger and supplication thickened Covenant's tone. “I don't know how you were driven to this. I don't know what went wrong with your life. But you don't have to do it.”

  The man did not blink; the eyes in the fire clenched him. Deliberately, he knotted his free hand in Joan's hair.

  “All right!” Covenant barked immediately. “All right. I accept. I'll trade you. Me for her.”

  “No.” Linden strove to shout aloud, but her cry was barely a whisper. “No”

  The worshippers were as silent as gravestones.

  Slowly, the man with the knife rose to his feet. He alone seemed to have the capacity to feel triumph; he was grinning ferally as he said, “It is as the Master promised.”

  He stepped back. At the same time, a quiver ran through Joan. She raised her head, gaped around her. Her face was free of possession. Moving awkwardly, she climbed to her feet. Bewildered and afraid, she searched for an escape, for anything she could understand.

  She saw Covenant.

  “Tom!” Springing from the rock, she fled toward him and threw herself into his arms.

  He hugged her, strained his arms around her as if he could not bear to lose her. But then, roughly, he pushed her away. “Go home,” he ordered. “It's over. You'll be safe now.” He faced her in the right direction, urged her into motion.

  She stopped and looked at him, imploring him to go with her.

  “Don't worry about me.” A difficult tenderness softened his tone. “You're safe now-that's the important thing. I'll be all right.” Somehow, he managed to smile. His eyes betrayed his pain. The light from the fire cast shadows of self-defiance across his bruised mien. And yet his smile expressed so much valour and rue that the sight of it tore Linden's heart.

  Kneeling with her head bowed and hot tears on her cheeks, she sensed rather than saw Joan leave the hollow. She could not bear to watch as Covenant moved down the hillside. I'm the only one who can help her. He was committing a kind of suicide.

  Suicide. Linden's father had killed himself. Her mother had begged for death. Her revulsion toward such things was a compelling obsession.

  But Thomas Covenant had chosen to die. And he had smiled.

  For Joan's sake.

  Linden had never seen one person do so much for another.

  She could not endure it. She already had too much blood on her hands. Dashing the tears from her eyes, she looked up.

  Covenant moved among the people as if he were beyond hope. The man with the knife guided him into the triangle of blood. The carious eyes in the fire blazed avidly.

  It was too much. With a passionate wrench, Linden broke the hold of her dismay, jumped upright.

  “Over here!” she yelled. “Police! Hurry! They're over here!” She flailed her arms as if she were signalling to people behind her.

  The eyes of the fire whipped at her, hit her with withering force. In that instant, she felt completely vulnerable, felt all her secrets exposed and devoured. But she ignored the eyes. She sped downward, daring the worshippers to believe she was alone.

  Covenant whirled in the triangle. Every line of his stance howled, No!

  People cried out. Her charge seemed to shatter the trance of the fire. The worshippers were thrown into confusion. They fled in all directions, scattered as if she had unpent a vast pressure of repugnance. For an instant, she was wild with hope.

  But the man with the knife did not flee. The rage of the bonfire exalted him. He slapped his arms around Covenant, threw him to the stone, kicked him so that he lay flat.

  The knife-! Covenant was too stunned to move.

  Linden hurled herself at the man, grappled for his arms. He was slick with ashes, and strong. She lost her grip.

  Covenant struggled to roll over. Swiftly, the man stooped to him, pinned him with one hand, raised the knife in the other.

  Linden attacked again, blocked the knife. Her fingernails gouged the man's face.

  Yowling, he dealt her a blow which stretched her on the rock.

  Everything reeled. Darkness spun at her from all sides.

  She saw the knife flash.

  Then the eyes of the fire blazed at her, and she was lost in a yellow triumph that roared like the furnace of the sun.

  PART I. NEED

  Four: “You Are Mine”

  RED agony spiked the centre of Thomas Covenant's chest. He felt that he was screaming. But the fire was too bright; he could not hear himself. From the wound, flame writhed through him, mapping his nerves like a territory of pain. He could not fight it,

  He did not want to fight it. He had saved Joan. Saved Joan. That thought iterated through him, consoling him for the unanswerable violence of the wound. For the first time in eleven years, he was at peace with his ex-wife. He had repaid the old debt between them to the limit of his mortality; he had given everything he possessed to make restitution for the blameless crime of his leprosy. Nothing more could be asked of him.

  But the fire had a voice. At first, it was too loud to be understood. It retorted in his ears like the crushing of boulders. He inhaled it with every failing breath; it echoed along the conflagration in his chest. But gradually it became clear. It uttered words as heavy as stones.

  “Your will is mine-

  You have no hope of life without me,

  Have no hope of life without me.

  All is mine.

  “Your heart is mine-

  There is no love or peace within you,

  Is no peace or love within you.

  All is mine.

  “Your soul is mine-

  You cannot dream of your salvation,

  Cannot plead for your salvation.

  You are mine.”

  The arrogance of the words filled him with repudiation. He knew that voice. He had spent ten years strengthening himself against it, tightening his grip on the truth of love and rage which had enabled him to master it. And still it had the power to appal him. It thronged with relish for the misery of lepers. It claimed him and would not let him go.

  Now he wanted to fight. He wanted to live. He could not bear to let that voice have its way with him.

  But the knife had struck too deeply; the wound was complete. A numbness crept through him, and the red fire faded toward mist. He had no pulse, could not remember breathing. Could not-

  Out of the mist, he remembered Linden Avery,

  Hellfire!

  She had followed him, even though he had warned her-warned her in spite of the fact that she had obviously been chosen to fulfil some essential role. He had been so torn-She had given an excruciating twist to his dilemma, had dismayed and infuriated him with her determination to meddle in matters she could not comprehend. And yet she was the first woman he had met in ten years who was not afraid of him.

  And she had fallen beside him, trying to save his life. The man had struck her; the fire had covered her as it reached for him. If she were being taken to the Land-!

  Of course she was. Why else had the old man accosted her?

  But she had neither knowledge nor power with which to defend herself, had no way to understand what was happening to her.

  Blindly, Covenant struggled against the numbness, resisted the voice. Linden had tried to save his life. He could not leave her t
o face such a doom alone. Wrath at the brutality of her plight crowded his heart. By hell! he raged. You can't do this!

  Suddenly, a resurgence of fire burned out of him-pure white flame, the fire of his need. It concentrated in the knife wound, screamed through his chest like an apotheosis or cautery. Heat hammered at his heart, his lungs, his half-hand. His body arched in ire and pain.

  The next instant, the crisis broke. Palpable relief poured through him. The pain receded, leaving him limp and gasping on the stone. The mist swirled with malice, but did not touch him.

  “Ah, you are stubborn yet,” the voice sneered, so personal in its contempt that it might have come from within his mind rather than from the attar-laden air. “Stubborn beyond my fondest desires. In one stroke you have ensured your own defeat. My will commands now, and you are lost. Groveler!”

  Covenant flinched at the virulence of the sound.

  Lord Foul.

  “Do you mislike the title I have given you?” The Despiser spoke softly, hardly above a whisper; but his quietness only emphasized his sharp hate. “You will merit it absolutely. Never have you been more truly mine. You believe that you have been near unto death. That is false, groveler! I would not permit you to die. I will obtain far better service from your life.”

  Covenant wanted to strike out at the mist, flail it away from him. But he was too weak. He lay on the stone as if his limbs had been bled dry. He needed all his will to dredge his voice back to Me. “I don't believe it,” he panted hoarsely. “You can't be stupid enough to try this again.”

  “Ah, you do not believe,” jeered Lord Foul. “Misdoubt it, then. Disbelieve, and I will rend your very soul from your bones!”

  No! Covenant rasped in silence. I've had ten years to understand what happened the last time. You can't do that to me again.

  “You will grovel before me,” the Despiser went on, “and call it joy. Your victory over me was nothing. It serves me well. Plans which I planted in my anguish have come to fruit. Time is altered. The world is not what it was. You are changed, Unbeliever.” The mist made that word, Unbeliever, into a name of sovereign scorn. “You are no longer free. You have sold yourself for that paltry woman who loathes you. When you accepted her life from me, you became my tool. A tool does not choose. Did not my Enemy expound to you the necessity of freedom? Your very presence here empowers me to master you.”