By unspoken agreement. Linden and Covenant left the Stonedownors to themselves as much as possible. She listened to them in a mood of detached affection for a time; but gradually their argument sent her musing on matters that had nothing to do with the Sunbane-or with what Covenant hoped to accomplish by confronting the Despiser. In the middle of her reverie, she surprised herself by asking without preamble, "What was Joan like? When you were married?”
He looked at her sharply; and she caught a glimpse of the unanswerable pain which lay at the roots of his certainty. Once before, when she had appealed to him, he had said of Joan, She's my ex-wife, as if that simple fact were an affirmation. Yet some kind of guilt or commitment toward Joan had endured in him for years after their divorce, compelling him to accept responsibility for her when she had come to him in madness and possession, seeking his blood.
Now he hesitated momentarily as if he were searching for a reply which would give Linden what she wanted without weakening his grasp on himself. Then he indicated Sunder and Hollian with a twitch of his head. “When Roger was born,” he said, overriding a catching his throat, “she didn't ask me what I thought She just named him after her father. And her grandfather. A whole series of Rogers on her side of the family. When he grows up, he probably won't even know who I am.”
His bitterness was plain. But other, more important feelings lay behind it. He had smiled for Joan when he had exchanged his life for hers.
And he was smiling now-the same terrible smile that Linden remembered with such dismay. While it lasted, she was on the verge of whispering at him in stark anguish. Is that what you're going to do? Again? Again?
But almost at once his expression softened; and the thing she feared seemed suddenly impossible. Her protest faded. He appeared unnaturally sure of what he meant to do; but, whatever it was, it did not reek of suicide. Inwardly shaken, she said, “Don't worry. He won't forget you.” Her attempt to console him sounded inane, but she had nothing else to offer. “It's not that easy for kids to forget their parents.”
In response, he slipped an arm around her waist, hugged her. They walked on together in silence.
But by mid-morning sunlight covered most of the riverbed, and the channel became increasingly hazardous. The rockgnarled and twisted course, with its secret shadows and occasionally overhanging banks, was an apt breeding place for pestilential creatures which lurked and struck. From Revelstone Hollian had brought an ample store of voure; but some of the crawling, scuttling life that now teemed in the river bottom seemed to be angered by the scent or immune to it altogether. Warped and feral sensations scraped across Linden's nerves; every time she saw something move, a pang of alarm went through her. Sunder and Hollian had to be more and more careful where they put their bare feet Covenant began to study the slopes where the Giants walked. He was considering the advantages of leaving the channel.
When a scorpion as large as Linden's two fists shot out from under a rock and lashed its stinger at the side of Covenant's boot, he growled a curse and made his decision. Kicking the scorpion away, he muttered, "That does it. Let's get out of here.”
No one objected. Followed mutely by Vain and Findail, the four companions went to a pile of boulders leaning against the east bank and climbed upward to join the First and Pitchwife.
They spent the rest of the day winding through the hills beside the empty riverbed. Periodically, the First strode up to a crest that gave her a wider view over the region; and her fingers rubbed the hilt of her longsword as if she were looking for a chance to use it. But she saw nothing that threatened the company except the waterless waste.
Whenever the hills opened westward, Linden could see the Westron Mountains sinking toward the horizon as they curved away to the south. And from the top of a rocky spine she was able to make out the distant rim of Revelstone, barely visible now above the crumpled terrain. Part of her yearned for the security it represented, for stone walls and the guardianship of Haruchai. Red limned the edges of the Land, made the desert hills as distinct as the work of a knife. Overhead, the sky seemed strangely depthless. Considered directly, it remained a pale blue occluded with fine dust; but the comers of her vision caught a hue of crimson like a hint of the Despiser's bloody-mindedness; and that colour made the heavens look fiat, closed.
Though she was defended by voure, she flinched internally at the vibrating ricochet of sandflies as big as starlings, the squirming haste of oversized centipedes. But when the First and Covenant started on down the far side of the spine, she wiped the sweat from her forehead, combed her hair back from her temples with her fingers, and followed.
Late in the afternoon, as shadows returned the sun's vermin to quiescence, the company descended to the watercourse again so that they could travel more easily until sunset. Then, when the light faded, they stopped for the night on a wide stretch of sand. There they ate supper, drank metheglin lightly flavoured with diamondraught, hollowed beds for themselves. And Hollian took out her lianar wand to discover what the morrow's sun would be.
Without a word. Sunder handed her the wrapped krill. Carefully, as if Loric's blade still awed her, she parted the cloth until a clear shaft of argent pierced the twilight. Sitting cross legged with the knife in her lap, she began to chant her invocation; and as she did so, she raised her Iianar into the krill-gem's light.
From the wood grew shoots and tendrils of fine fire. They spread about her on the ground like creepers, climbed into the argence like vines. They burned without heat, without harming the wand; and their radiant filigree made the night eldritch and strange.
Her flame was the precise incarnadine of the present sun.
Linden thought then that Hollian would cease her invocation. A second day of pestilence was not a surprise. But the eh-Brand kept her power alight, and a new note of intensity entered her chant. With a start. Linden realized that Hollian was stretching herself, reaching beyond her accustomed limits.
After a moment, a quiet flare of blue like a gentle coruscation appeared at the tips of the fire-fronds.
For an instant, azure rushed inward along the vines, transforming the flames, altering the crimson ambience of the dark. Then it was quenched; all the fire vanished. Hollian sat with the lianar cradled in her fingers and the light of the krill on her face. She was smiting faintly.
“The morrow's sun will be a sun of pestilence.” Her voice revealed strain and weariness, but they were not serious. “But the sun of the day following will be a sun of rain.”
“Good!” said Covenant. “Two days of rain, and we'll practically be in Andelain.” He turned to the First. “It looks like we're not going to be able to build rafts. Can you and Pitchwife support the four of us when the river starts to run?”
In answer, the First snorted as if the question were unworthy of her.
Gleaming with pride. Sunder put his arms around Hollian. But her attention was fixed on Covenant. She took a deep breath for strength, then asked, "Ur-Lord, is it truly your intent to enter Andelain once again?”
Covenant faced her sharply. A grimace twisted his mouth. “You asked me that the last time.” He seemed to expect her to renew her former refusal. “You know I want to go there. I never get enough of it. It's the only place where there's any Law left alive.”
The krill light emphasized the darkness of her hair; but its reflection in her eyes was clear. "You have told that tale. And I have spoken of the acquaintance of my people with the peril of Andelain. To us its name was one of proven madness. No man or woman known to us entered that land where the Sunbane does not reign and returned whole of mind. Yet you have entered and emerged, defying that truth as you defy all others. Thus the truth is altered. The life of the Land is not what it was. And in my turn I am changed. I have conceived a desire to do that which I have not done-to sojourn among my fears and strengths and learn the new truth of them.