The Wounded Land Read online

  Her eyes clung to him like claws.

  “There are two completely different explanations,” he said as evenly as he could. “Outside and inside. The outside explanation might be easier to accept. It goes like this.” He took a deep breath. “You and I are still lying in that triangle.” A grimace strained his bruises. “We’re unconscious. And while we’re unconscious, we’re dreaming. We’re sharing a dream.”

  Her mien was tight with disbelief. He hastened to add, “It’s not as farfetched as you think. Deep down in their minds—down where dreams come from—most people have a lot in common. That’s why so many of our dreams fall into patterns that other people can recognize.

  “It’s happening to us.” He kept pouring words at her, not because he wanted to convince her, but because he knew she needed time, needed any answer, however improbable, to help her survive the first shock of her situation. “We’re sharing a dream. And we’re not the only ones,” he went on, denying her a chance to put her incredulity into words. “Joan had fragments of the same dream. And that old man—the one you saved. We’re all tied into the same unconscious process.”

  Her gaze wavered. He snapped, “Keep looking at me! I have to tell you what kind of dream it is. It’s dangerous. It can hurt you. The things buried in us are powerful and violent, and they are going to come out. The darkness in us—the destructive side, the side we keep locked up all our lives—is alive here. Everybody has some self-hate inside. Here it’s personified—externalized, the way things happen in dreams. He calls himself Lord Foul the Despiser, and he wants to destroy us.

  “That’s what Joan kept talking about. Lord Foul. And that’s what the old man meant. ‘However he may assail you. Be true.’ Be true to yourself, don’t serve the Despiser, don’t let him destroy you. That’s what we have to do.” He pleaded with her to accept the consequences of what he was saying, even if she chose not to believe the explanation itself. “We have to stay sane, hang onto ourselves, defend what we are and what we believe and what we want. Until it’s over. Until we regain consciousness.”

  He stopped, forced himself to give her time.

  Her eyes dropped to his chest, as if that scar were a test of what he said. Shadows of fear passed across her countenance. Covenant felt suddenly sure that she was familiar with self-hate.

  Tightly she said, “This has happened to you before.”

  He nodded.

  She did not raise her head. “And you believe it?”

  He wanted to say, Partially. If you put the two explanations together, they come close to what I believe. But in her present straits he could not trouble her with disclaimers. Instead he got to his feet, drew her with him to look out from the Watch.

  She stiffened against him in shock.

  They were on a slab like a platform that appeared to hang suspended in the air. An expanse of sky as huge as if they were perched on a mountaintop covered them. The weird halo of the sun gave a disturbing hue to the roiling gray sea of clouds two hundred feet below them. The clouds thrashed like thunderheads, concealing the earth from horizon to horizon.

  A spasm of vertigo wrenched Covenant; he remembered acutely that he was four thousand feet above the foothills. But he ignored the imminent reel and panic around him and concentrated on Linden.

  She was stunned, rigid. This leap without transition from night in the woods to morning on such an eminence staggered her. He wanted to put his arms around her, hide her face against his chest to protect her; but he knew he could not do so, could not give her the strength to bear things which once had almost shattered him. She had to achieve her own survival. Grimly he turned her to look in the opposite direction.

  The mountains rising dramatically there seemed to strike her a blow. They sprang upward out of the clouds a stone’s throw from the Watch. Their peaks were rugged and dour. From the cliff behind the Watch, they withdrew on both sides like a wedge, piling higher into the distance. But off to the right a spur of the range marched back across the clouds before falling away again.

  Linden gaped at the cliff as if it were about to fall on her. Covenant could feel her ribs straining; she was caught in the predicament of the mad and could not find enough air in all the open sky to enable her to cry out. Fearing that she might break away from him, lose herself over the parapet, he tugged her back down to the safety of the floor. She crumpled to her knees, gagging silently. Her eyes had a terrible glazed and empty look.

  “Linden!” Because he did not know what else to do, he barked, “Haven’t you even got the guts to go on living?”

  She gasped, inhaled. Her eyes swept into focus on him like swords leaping from their scabbards. The odd sunlight gave her face an aspect of dark fury.

  “I’m sorry,” he said thickly. Her reaction made him ache as badly as helplessness. “You were so—” Unwittingly he had trespassed on something which he had no right to touch. “I never wanted this to happen to you.”

  She rejected his regret with a violent shake of her head. “Now,” she panted, “you’re going to tell me the other explanation.”

  He nodded. Slowly he released her, withdrew to sit with his back against the parapet. He did not understand her strange combination of strength and weakness; but at the moment his incomprehension was unimportant. “The inside explanation.”

  A deep weariness ran through him. He fought it for the words he needed. “We’re in a place called the Land. It’s a different world—like being on a completely different planet. These mountains are the Southron Range, the southern edge. All the rest of the Land is west and north and east from us. This place is Kevin’s Watch. Below us, and a bit to the west, there used to be a village called Mithil Stonedown. Revelstone is—” But the thought of Revelstone recalled the Lords; he shied away from it. “I’ve been here before.

  “Most of what I can tell you about it won’t make much sense until you see it for yourself. But there’s one thing that’s important right now. The Land has an enemy. Lord Foul.” He studied her, trying to read her response. But her eyes brandished darkness at him, nothing else. “For thousands of years,” he went on, “Foul has been trying to destroy the Land. It’s—sort of a prison for him. He wants to break out.” He groaned inwardly at the impossibility of making what he had to say acceptable to someone who had never had the experience. “He translated us out of our world. Brought us here. He wants us to serve him. He thinks he can manipulate us into helping him destroy the Land.

  “We have power here.” He prayed he was speaking the truth. “Since we come from outside, we aren’t bound by the Law, the natural order that holds everything together. That’s why Foul wants us, wants to use us. We can do things nobody else here can.”

  To spare himself the burden of her incredulity, he leaned his head against the parapet and gazed up at the mountains. “The necessity of freedom,” he breathed. “As long as we aren’t bound by any Law, or anybody—or any explanation,” he said to ease his conscience, “we’re powerful.” But I’m not free. I’ve already chosen. “That’s what it comes down to. Power. The power that healed me.

  “That old man— Somehow he knows what’s going on in the Land. And he’s no friend of Foul’s. He chose you for something—I don’t know what. Or maybe he wanted to reassure himself. Find out if you’re the kind of person Foul can manipulate.

  “As for Joan, she was Foul’s way of getting at me. She was vulnerable to him. After what happened the last time I was here, I wasn’t. He used her to get me to step into that triangle by my own choice. So he could summon me here.” What I don’t understand, he sighed, is why he had to do it that way. It wasn’t like that before. “Maybe it’s an accident that you’re here, too. But I don’t think so.”

  Linden glanced down at the stone as if to verify that it was substantial, then touched the bruise behind her ear. Frowning, she shifted into a sitting position. Now she did not look at him. “I don’t understand,” she said stiffly. “First you tell me this is a dream—then you say it’s real. First you’re
dying back there in the woods—then you’re healed by some kind of—some kind of magic. First Lord Foul is a figment—then he’s real.” In spite of her control, her voice trembled slightly. “Which is it? You can’t have it both ways.” Her fist clenched. “You could be dying.”

  Ah, I have to have it both ways, Covenant murmured. It’s like vertigo. The answer is in the contradiction—in the eye of the paradox. But he did not utter his thought aloud.

  Yet Linden’s question relieved him. Already her restless mind—that need which had rejected his efforts to warn her, had driven her to follow him to his doom—was beginning to grapple with her situation. If she had the strength to challenge him, then her crisis was past, at least for the moment. He found himself smiling in spite of his fear.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “Maybe this is real—maybe it isn’t. You can believe whatever you want. I’m just offering you a frame of reference, so you’ll have some place to start.”

  Her hands kept moving, touching herself, the stone, as if she needed tactile sensation to assure her of her own existence. After a moment, she said, “You’ve been here before.” Her anger had turned to pain. “It’s your life. Tell me how to understand.”

  “Face it,” he said without hesitation. “Go forward. Find out what happens—what’s at stake. What matters to you.” He knew from experience that there was no other defense against insanity; the Land’s reality and its unreality could not be reconciled. “Give yourself a chance to find out who you are.”

  “I know who I am.” Her jaw was stubborn. The lines of her nose seemed precise rather than fragile; her mouth was severe by habit. “I’m a doctor.” But she was facing something she did not know how to grasp. “I don’t even have my bag.” She scrutinized her hands as if she wondered what they were good for. When she met his gaze, her question was a demand as well as an appeal. “What do you believe?”

  “I believe”—he made no effort to muffle his hardness—“that we’ve got to find some way to stop Foul. That’s more important than anything. He’s trying to destroy the Land. I’m not going to let him get away with that. That’s who I am.”

  She stared at his affirmation. “Why? What does it have to do with you? If this is a dream, it doesn’t matter. And if it’s—” She had difficulty saying the words. “If it’s real, it’s not your problem. You can ignore it.”

  Covenant tasted old rage. “Foul laughs at lepers.”

  At that, a glare of comprehension touched her eyes. Her scowl said plainly, Nobody has the right to laugh at illness.

  In a tight voice, she asked, “What do we do now?”

  “Now?” He was weak with fatigue; but her question galvanized him. She had reasons, strengths, possibilities. The old man had not risked her gratuitously. “Now,” he said grimly, “if I can hold off my vertigo, we get down from here, and go find out what kind of trouble we’re in.”

  “Down?” She blinked at him. “I don’t know how we got up.”

  To answer her, he nodded toward the mountains. When she turned, she noticed the gap in the curve of the parapet facing the cliff. He watched as she crawled to the gap, saw what he already knew was there.

  The parapet circled the tip of a long spire of stone which angled toward the cliff under the Watch. There were rude stairs cut into the upper surface of the shaft.

  He joined her. One glance told him that his dizziness would not be easily overcome. Two hundred feet below him, the stairs vanished in the clouds like a fall into darkness.

  FIVE: Thunder and Lightning

  “I’ll go first.” Covenant was trembling deep in his bones. He did not look at Linden. “This stair joins the cliff—but if we fall, it’s four thousand feet down. I’m no good at heights. If I slip, I don’t want to take you with me.” Deliberately he set himself at the gap, feet first so that he could back through it.

  There he paused, tried to resist the vertigo which unmoored his mind by giving himself a VSE. But the exercise aroused a pang of leper’s anxiety. Under the blue-tinged sun, his skin had a dim purple cast, as if his leprosy had already spread up his arms, affecting the pigmentation, killing the nerves.

  A sudden weakness yearned in his muscles, making his shoulders quiver. The particular numbness of his dead nerves had not altered, for better or worse. But the diseased hue of his flesh looked fatal and prophetic; it struck him like a leap of intuition. One of his questions answered itself. Why was Linden here? Why had the old man spoken to her rather than to him? Because she was necessary. To save the Land when he failed.

  The wild magic is no longer potent. So much for power. He had already abandoned himself to Lord Foul’s machinations. A groan escaped him before he could lock his teeth on it.

  “Covenant?” Concern sharpened Linden’s voice. “Are you all right?”

  He could not reply. The simple fact that she was worried about him, was capable of worrying about him when she was under so much stress, multiplied the dismay in his bones. His eyes clung to the stone, searching for strength.

  “Covenant!” Her demand was like a slap in the face. “I don’t know how to help you. Tell me what to do.”

  What to do. None of this was her fault. She deserved an answer. He pulled himself down into the center of his fatigue and dizziness. Had he really doomed himself by taking Joan’s place? Surely he did not have to fail? Surely the power for which he had paid such a price was not so easily discounted? Without raising his head, he gritted, “At the bottom of the stairs, to my left, there’s a ledge in the cliff. Be careful.”

  Coercing himself into motion, he backed through the gap.

  As his head passed below the level of the Watch, he heard her whisper fiercely, “Damn you, why do you have to act so impervious? All I want to do is help.” She sounded as if her sanity depended on her ability to be of help.

  But he could not afford to think about her; the peril of the stairs consumed his attention. He worked his way down them as if they were a ladder, clutching them with his hands, kicking each foot into them to be sure it was secure before he trusted it. His gaze never left his hands. They strained on the steps until the sinews stood out like desperation.

  The void around him seemed fathomless. He could hear the emptiness of the wind. And the swift seething of the clouds below him had a hypnotic power, sucking at his concentration. Long plunges yawned all around him. But he knew this fear. Holding his breath, he lowered himself into the clouds—into the still center of his vertigo.

  Abruptly the sun faded and went out. Gray gloom thickened toward midnight at every step of the descent.

  A pale flash ran through the dank sea, followed almost at once by thunder. The wind mounted, rushed wetly at him as if it sought to lift him off the spire. The stone became slick. His numb fingers could not tell the difference, but the nerves in his wrists and elbows registered every slippage of his grasp.

  Again a bolt of lightning thrashed past him, illuminating the mad boil and speed of the clouds. The sky shattered. Instinctively he flattened himself against the stone. Something in him howled, but he could not tell whether it howled aloud.

  Crawling painfully through the brutal impact of the storm, he went on downward.

  He marked his progress in the intensifying weight of the rain. The fine cold sting of spray against his sore face became a pelting of heavy drops like a shower of pebbles. Soon he was drenched and battered. Lightning and thunder shouted across him, articulating savagery. But the promise of the ledge drew him on.

  At last, his feet found it. Thrusting away from the spire, he pressed his back to the wall of the cliff, gaping upward.

  A flail of blue-white fire rendered Linden out of the darkness. She was just above the level of his head.

  When she reached the ledge, he caught her so that she would not stumble over the precipice. She gripped him urgently. “Covenant!” The wind ripped her shout away; he could barely hear her. “Are you all right?”

  He put his mouth to her ear. “Stay against the cliff! We
’ve got to find shelter!”

  She nodded sharply.

  Clenching her right hand in his left, he turned his back on the fall and began to shuttle west along the ledge.

  Lightning burned overhead, to give him a glimpse of his situation. The ledge was two or three feet wide and ran roughly level across the cliff face. From its edge, the mountain disappeared into the abyss of the clouds.

  Thunder hammered at him like the voice of his vertigo, commanding him to lose his balance. Wind and rain as shrill as chaos lashed his back. But Linden’s hand anchored him. He squeezed himself like yearning against the cliff and crept slowly forward.

  At every lightning blast, he peered ahead through the rain, trying to see the end of the ledge.

  There: a vertical line like a scar in the cliff face.

  He reached it, pulled Linden past the corner, up a slope of mud and scree which gushed water as if it were a stream bed. At once, the wind became a constricted yowl. The next blue glare revealed that they had entered a narrow ravine sluicing upward through the mountainside. Water frothed like rapids past the boulders which cramped the floor of the ravine.

  He struggled ahead until he and Linden were above a boulder that appeared large enough to be secure. There he halted and sat down in the current with his back braced on the wall. She joined him. Water flooded over their legs; rain blinded their faces. He did not care. He had to rest.

  After a few moments, she shifted, put her face to his ear. “Now what?”

  Now what? He did not know. Exhaustion numbed his mind. But she was right; they could not remain where they were. He mustered a wan shout. “There’s a path somewhere!”

  “You don’t know the way? You said you’ve been here before!”

  “Ten years ago!” And he had been unconscious the second time; Saltheart Foamfollower had carried him.