The First and Pitchwife were both awake. Her injury was still sore; but diamondraught had quickened her native toughness, and the damage was no longer serious. She glanced at the Graveler, then faced Covenant and Linden and shook her head. Her training had not prepared her to deal with Sunder's stricken condition.
Her husband levered himself off the ground with his elbow and crawled toward the sacks of supplies. Taking up a pouch of diamondraught, he forced his cramped muscles to lift him upright, carry him to the Graveler's side. Without a word, he opened the pouch and held it under Sunder's nose.
Its scent drew a sound like a muffled sob from the Stonedownor. But he did not raise his head.
Helpless with pity, Pitchwife withdrew.
No one spoke. Linden, Covenant, and the Giants ate a cheerless meal before the sun rose. Then the First and Pitchwife went to find stone on which to meet the day. In shared apprehension. Linden and Covenant started toward Sunder. But, by chance or design, he had seated himself upon an exposed face of rock. He needed no protection.
Gleaming azure, the sun crested the horizon, then disappeared as black clouds began to host westward.
Spasms of wind kicked across the gravid surface of the White River. Pitchwife hastened to secure the supplies. By tile time he was finished, the first drizzle had begun to fall. It mounted toward downpour with a sound like frying meat, Linden eyed the quick current of the White and shuddered. Its cold ran past her senses like the edge of a rasp. But she had already survived similar immersions without diamondraught or metheglin to sustain her She was determined to endure as long as necessary. Grimly, she turned back to the problem of Sunder.
He had risen to his feet. Head bowed, eyes focused on nothing, he faced his companions and the River.
He held Hollian upright in his arms, hugging her to his sore breast so that her soles did not touch the ground.
Covenant met Linden's gaze. Then he moved to stand in front of Sunder. The muscles of his shoulders bunched and throttled; but his voice was gentle, husky with rue. “Sunder,” he said, “put her down.” His hands clenched at his sides. “You'll drown yourself if you try to take her with you. I can't lose you too.” In the background of his words blew a wind of grief like the rising of the rain. “We'll help you bury her.”
Sunder gave no response, did not look at Covenant. He appeared to be waiting for the Unbeliever to get out of his way.
Covenant's tone hardened. “Don't make us take her away from you.”
In reply. Sunder lowered Hollian's feet to the ground. Linden felt no shift in his emanations, no warning. With his right hand, he drew the krill from his jerkin.
The covering of the blade fell away, flapped out of reach along the wind. He gripped the hot handle in his bare fingers. Pain crossed his face like a snarl, but he did not flinch. White light shone from the gem, as clear as a threat.
Lifting Hollian with his left arm, he started down toward the River.
Covenant let him pass. Linden and the Giants let him pass. Then the First sent Pitchwife after him, so that he would not be alone in the swift, cold hazard of the current.
“He's going to Andelain,” Covenant grated. “He's going to carry her all the way to Andelain. Who do you think he wants to find?”
Without waiting for an answer, he followed Pitchwife and the Graveler.
Linden stared after them and groaned, His Dead! The Dead in Andelain. Nassic his father. Kalina his mother. The wife and son he had shed in the name of Mithil Stonedown.
Or Hollian herself?
Sweet Christ! How will he stand it? He’ll go mad and never come back.
Diving into the current. Linden went downriver in a wild rush with the First swimming strongly at her side.
She was not prepared for the acute power of the cold. As her health-sense grew in range and discernment, it made her more and more vulnerable to what she felt. The days she had spent in the Mithil River with Covenant and Sunder had not been this bad. The chill cudgelled her flesh, pounded her raw nerves. Time and again, she believed that surely now she would begin to wail, that at last the Sunbane would master her. Yet the undaunted muscle of the First's shoulder supported her. And Covenant stayed with her. Through the bludgeoning rain, the thunder that shattered the air, the lightning that ripped the heavens, his stubborn sense of purpose remained within reach of her percipience. In spite of numbing misery and desperation, she wanted to live-wanted to survive every ill Lord Foul hurled against her. Until her chance came to put a stop to it.
Visible by lightning-burst, Pitchwife rode the River a stroke or two ahead of the First. With one hand, he held up the Graveler. And Sunder bore Hollian as if she were merely sleeping.
Sometime during the middle of the day, the White dashed frothing and tumbling into a confluence that tore the travellers down the new channel like dead leaves in the wind. Joined by the Grey, the White River had become the Soulsease; and for the rest of that day-and all the next-it carried the company along. The rains blinded Linden's sense of direction. But at night, when the skies were clear and the waning moon rose over the pummelled wasteland, she was able to see that the river's course had turned toward the east
The second evening after the confluence, the First asked Covenant when they would reach Andelain. He and Linden sat as close as possible to the small heat of their campfire; and Pitchwife and the First crouched there also as if even they needed something more than diamondraught to restore their courage. But Sunder remained a short distance away in the same posture he had assumed the two previous nights-hunched over his pain on the sheetrock of the campsite with Hollian outstretched rigidly in front' of him as if at any moment she might begin to breathe again.
Side by side. Vain and Findail stood at the fringes of the light. Linden had not seen them enter the River, did not know how they travelled the rain scoured waste. But each evening they appeared together shortly after sunset and waited without speaking for the night to pass.
Covenant mused into the flames for a moment, then replied, “I'm a bad judge of distance. I don't know how far we've come.” His face appeared waxen with the consequences of cold. “But this is the Soulsease. It goes almost straight to Mount Thunder from here. We ought- “ He extended his hands toward the fire, put them too close to the flames, as if he had forgotten the reason for their numbness. But then his leper's instincts caused him to draw back. “It depends on tile sun. It's due to change. Unless we get a desert sun, the River’ll keep running. We ought to reach Andelain sometime tomorrow.”
The First nodded and went back to her private thoughts. Behind her Giantish strength and the healing of her injury, she was deeply tired. After a moment, she drew her longsword, began to clean and dry it with the slow, methodical movements of a woman who did not know what else to do.
As if to emulate her, Pitchwife took his flute from his pack, shook the water out of it, and tried to play. But his hands or his lips were too weary to hold any music. Soon he gave up the attempt.
For a while. Linden thought about the sun and let herself feel a touch of relief. A fertile sun or a sun of pestilence would warm the water. They would allow her to see the sky, open up the world around her. And a desert sun would certainly not be cold.
But gradually she became aware that Covenant was still shivering. A quick glance showed her he was not ill. After his passage through the Banefire, she doubted that he would ever be ill again. But he was clenched around himself, knotted so tightly that he seemed feverish.