The Wounded Land (31 page)

“Why?”

At the same time, Hollian asked, “Of what use am I to you?”

Without warning, Linden’s throat filled with weeping. She felt like a lorn child, confronted by extremities she could not meet. She
had to muster all her severity in order to articulate, “He’s dying. I can feel it.” In a shudder of memory, she saw Marid’s fangs. “It’s worse than it was before. I need help.” The help she needed was vivid and appalling to her; but she could not stop. “One of you isn’t enough. You’ll just bleed to death. Or I will.” Impelled by her fear of losing Covenant, she wrenched her voice at Hollian. “I need power. To heal him.”

She had not seen the eh-Brand approach; but now Hollian was swimming at her side. Softly the young woman said, “Perhaps such shedding is unnecessary. It may be that I can succor him. An eh-Brand has some knowledge of healing. But I do not wish to fall prey to the Clave a second time.”

Linden gritted her teeth until her jaw ached, containing her desperation. “You’ve seen what he can do. Do you think he’s going to walk into Revelstone and just let them sacrifice him?”

Hollian thought for a moment, touched Covenant’s swelling gently. Then she said, “I will attempt it. But I must await the sun’s rising. And I must know how this harm came upon him.”

Linden’s self-command did not reach so far. Sunrise would be too late. Covenant could not last until dawn. The Chosen! she rasped at herself. Dear God. She left the eh-Brand’s questions for Sunder to answer. As he began a taut account of what had happened to Covenant, Linden’s attention slipped away to the Unbeliever’s wracked and failing body.

She could feel the poison seeping past the useless constriction of his shirt sleeve. Death gnawed like leprosy at the sinews of his life. He absolutely could not last until dawn.

Her mother had begged to die; but he wanted to live. He had exchanged himself for Joan, had smiled as if the prospect were a benison; yet his every act showed that he wanted to live. Perhaps he
was
mad; perhaps his talk about a Despiser was paranoia rather than truth. But the conclusions he drew from it were ones she could not refute. She had learned in Crystal Stonedown that she shared them.

Now he was dying.

She had to help him. She was a doctor. Surely she could do something about his illness. Impossible that her strange acuity could not cut both ways. With an inward whimper, she abandoned resistance, bared her heart.

Slowly she reached her awareness into him, inhabited his flesh with her private self. She felt his eviscerated respiration as her own, suffered the heat of his fever, clung to him more intimately than she had ever held to any man.

Then she was foundering in venom. She was powerless to repel it. Nausea filled her like the sick breath of the old man who had told her to
Be true
. No part of her knew how to give life in this way. But what she could do, she did. She fought for him with the same grim and secretly hopeless determination which had compelled her to study medicine as if it were an act of rage against the ineffectuality of her parents—a man and woman who had understood nothing about life except death, and had coveted the thing they understood with the lust of lovers. They had taught her the importance of efficacy. She had pursued it without rest for fifteen years.

That pursuit had taken her to Haven Farm. And there her failure in the face of Joan’s affliction had cast her whole life into doubt. Now that doubt wore the taste and corruption of Covenant’s venom. She could not quench the poison. But she tried by force of will to shore up the last preterite barriers of his life. This sickness was a moral evil; it
offended her just as Marid had offended her, as Nassic’s murder and the hot knife had offended her; and she denied it with every beat of her heart. She squeezed air into his lungs, pressured his pulse to continue, opposed the gnawing and spread of the ill.

Alone, she kept him alive through the remainder of the night.

The bones of her forehead ached with shared fever when Sunder brought her back to herself. Dawn was in the air. He and Hollian had drawn the raft toward the riverbank. Linden looked about her tabidly. Her soul was full of ashes. A part of her panted over and over, No. Never again. The River ran through a lowland which should have been composed of broad leas; but instead, the area was a gray waste where mountains of preternatural grass had been beaten down by three days of torrential rain, then rotted by the sun of pestilence. As the approach of day stirred the air, currents of putrefaction shifted back and forth across the Mithil.

But she saw why Sunder and Hollian had chosen this place. Near the bank, a sandbar angled partway across the watercourse, forming a swath where Covenant could lie, away from the fetid grass.

The Stonedownors secured the raft, lilted Covenant to the sand, then raised him into Linden’s arms. Hugging him erect, though she herself swayed with exhaustion, she watched as Sunder and Hollian hastened to the riverbank and began hunting for stone. Soon they were out of sight.

With the thin remnant of her strength, Linden confronted the sun.

It hove over the horizon wearing incarnadine like the sails of a plague-ship. She welcomed its warmth—needed to be warm, yearned to be dry—but its corona made her moan with empty repugnance. She lowered Covenant to the sand, then sat beside him, studied him as if she were afraid to close her eyes. She did not know how soon the insects would begin to swarm.

But when Sunder and Hollian returned, they were excited. The tension between them had not relaxed; but they had found something important to them both. Together they carried a large bush which they had uprooted as if it were a treasure.

“
Voure
!” Hollian called as she and Sunder brought the bush to the sandbar. Her pale skin was luminous in the sunlight. “This is good fortune.
Voure
is greatly rare.” They set the bush down nearby, and at once began to strip its leaves.

“Rare, indeed,” muttered Sunder. “Such names are spoken in the Rede, but I have never beheld
voure
.”

“Does it heal?” Linden asked faintly.

In response, the eh-Brand gave her a handful of leaves. They were as pulpy as sponges; clear sap dripped from their broken stems. Their pungent odor made her wince.

“Rub the sap upon your face and arms,” said Hollian. “
Voure
is a potent ward against insects.”

Linden stared until her senses finally registered the truth of the eh-Brand’s words. Then she obeyed. When she had smeared sap over herself, she did the same to Covenant.

Sunder and Hollian were similarly busy. After they had finished, he stored the remaining leaves in his knapsack.

“Now,” the eh-Brand said promptly, “I must do what lies within my capacity to restore the Halfhand.”

“His name is Covenant,” Linden protested dimly. To her,
Halfhand
was a Clave word: she did not like it.

Hollian blinked as if this were irrelevant, made no reply.

“Do you require my aid?” asked Sunder. His stiffness had returned. In some way that Linden could not fathom, Hollian annoyed or threatened him.

The eh-Brand’s response was equally curt. “I think not.”

“Then I will put this
voure
to the test.” He stood up. “I will go in search of
aliantha
.” Moving brusquely, he went back to the riverbank, stalked away through the rotting grass.

Hollian wasted no time. From within her shift, she drew out a small iron dirk and her
lianar
wand. Kneeling at Covenant’s right shoulder, she placed the
lianar
on his chest, took the dirk in her left hand.

The sun was above the horizon now, exerting its corruption. But the pungence of the
voure
seemed to form a buckler against putrefaction. And though large insects had begun to buzz and gust in all directions, they did not come near the sandbar. Linden ached to concentrate on such things. She did not want to watch the eh-Brand’s bloody rites. Did not want to see them fail. Yet she attached her eyes to the knife, forced herself to follow it.

Like Sunder’s left forearm, Hollian’s right palm was laced with old scars. She drew the iron across her flesh. A runnel of dark rich blood started down her bare wrist.

Setting down her dirk, she took up the
lianar
in her bleeding hand. Her lips moved, but she made no sound.

The atmosphere focused around her wand. Abruptly flames licked the wood. Fire the color of the sun’s aura skirled around her fingers. Her voice became an audible chant, but the words were alien to Linden. The fire grew stronger; it covered Hollian’s hand, began to tongue the blood on her wrist.

As she chanted, her fire sent out long delicate shoots like tendrils of wisteria. They grew to the sand, stretched along the water like veins of blood in the current, went searching up the riverbank as if they sought a place to root.

Supported by a shimmering network of power tendrils, she tightened her chant, and lowered the
lianar
to Covenant’s envenomed forearm. Linden flinched instinctively. She could taste the ill in the fire, feel the preternatural force of the Sunbane. Hollian drew on the same sources of power which Sunder tapped with his Sunstone. But after a moment Linden discerned that the fire’s effect was not ill. Hollian fought poison with poison. When she lifted her wand from Covenant’s arm, the tension of his swelling had already begun to recede.

Carefully she shifted her power to his forehead, set flame to the fever in his skull.

At once, his body sprang rigid, head jerked back; a scream ripped his throat. From his ring, an instant white detonation blasted sand over the two women and the River.

Before Linden could react, he went completely limp.

The eh-Brand sagged at his side. The flame vanished from her
lianar
, leaving the wood pale, clean, and whole. In the space of a heartbeat, the fire-tendrils extinguished themselves; but they continued to echo across Linden’s sight.

She rushed to examine Covenant. Apprehension choked her. But as she touched him, he inhaled deeply, began to breathe as if he were only asleep. She felt for his pulse; it was distinct and secure.

Relief flooded through her. The Mithil and the sun grew oddly dim. She was prone on the sand without realizing that she had reclined. Her left hand lay in the water. That cool touch seemed to be all that kept her from weeping.

In a weak voice, Hollian asked, “Is he well?”

Linden did not answer because she had no words.

Shortly Sunder returned, his hands laden with treasure-berries. He seemed to understand the exhaustion of his companions. Without speaking, he bent over Linden, slipped a berry between her lips.

Its deliciousness restored her. She sat up, estimated the amount of
aliantha
Sunder held, took her share. The berries fed a part of her which had been stretched past its limits by her efforts to keep Covenant alive.

Hollian watched in weariness and dismay as Sunder consumed his portion of the
aliantha
. But she could not bring herself to touch the berries he offered her.

As her strength returned, Linden propped Covenant into a half-sitting position, then pitted berries and fed them to him. Their effect was almost immediate; they steadied his respiration, firmed his muscle tone, cleansed the color of his skin.

Deliberately she looked at Hollian. The exertion of aiding Covenant had left the eh-Brand in need of aliment. And her searching gaze could find no other answer. With a shudder of resolution, she accepted a berry, put it in her mouth. After a moment, she bit down on it.

Her own pleasure startled her. Revelation glowed in her eyes, and her fear seemed to fall away like a discarded mantle.

With a private sigh, Linden lowered Covenant’s head to the sand, and let herself rest.

The companions remained on the sandbar for a good part of the morning, recuperating. Then when Covenant’s swelling had turned from black to a mottled yellow-purple, and had declined from his shoulder, Linden judged that he was able to travel. They set off down the Mithil once more.

The
voure
continued to protect them from insects. Hollian said the sap would retain its potency for several days; and Linden began to believe this when she discovered that the odor still clung to her after more than half a day immersed in the water.

In the lurid red of sunset, they stopped on a broad slope of rock spreading northward out of the River. After the strain of the past days, Linden hardly noticed the discomfort of sleeping on stone. Yet part of her stayed in touch with Covenant, like a string tuned to resonate sympathetically at a certain pitch. In the middle of the night, she found herself staring at the acute sickle of the moon. Covenant was sitting beside her. He seemed unaware of her. Quietly he moved to the water’s edge for a drink.

She followed, anxious that he might be suffering from a relapse of delirium. But when he saw her, he recognized her with a nod, and drew her away to a place where they could at least whisper without disturbing their companions. The way he carried his arm showed that it was tender but utile. His expression was obscure in the vague light; but his voice sounded lucid.

“Who’s the woman?”

She stood close to him, peered into the shadow of his countenance. “You don’t remember?”

“I remember bees.” He gave a quick shudder. “That Raver. Nothing else.”

Her efforts to preserve his life had left her vulnerable to him. She had shared his extremity; and now he seemed to have a claim on her
which she would never be able to refuse. Even her heartbeat belonged to him, “You had a relapse,”

“A relapse—?” He tried to flex his sore arm.

“You were stung, and went into shock. It was like another snakebite in the same place, only worse. I thought—” She touched his shoulder involuntarily. “I thought you weren’t going to make it.”

“When was that?”

“A day and a half ago.”

“How did—?” he began, then changed his mind. “Then what?”

“Sunder and I couldn’t do anything for you. We just went on.” She started to speak rapidly. “That night, we came to another Stonedown.” She told him the story as if she were in a hurry to reach the end of it. But when she tried to describe the power of his ring, he stopped her. “That’s impossible,” he whispered.