She put her hand over his right forearm, drew his attention toward her. With her eyes, she asked what troubled him.
He looked at her gauntly, then returned his gaze to the fire as if among the coals he might find the words he needed. When he spoke, he surprised her by inquiring, “Are you sure you want to go to Andelain? The last time you had the chance, you turned it down.”
That was true. Poised at the southwest verge of the Hills with Sunder and Hollian, she had refused to go with Covenant, even though the radiance of health from across the Mithil River had been vivid to her bruised nerves. She had feared the sheer power of that region. Some of her fear she had learned from Hollian's dread, Hollian's belief that Andelain was a place where people lost their minds. But most of it had arisen from an encompassing distrust of everything to which her percipience made her vulnerable. The Sunbane had bored into her like a sickness, as acute and anguished as any disease; but as a disease she had understood it. And it had suited her: it had been appropriate to the structure of her life. But for that very reason Andelain had threatened her more intimately. It had endangered her difficult self possession. She had not believed that any good could come of anything which had such strength over her.
And later Covenant had relayed to her the words of Elena among the Dead. The former High Lord had said, I rue that the woman your companion lacked heart to accompany you, for you have much to bear. But she must come to meet herself in her own time. Care for her, beloved, so that in the end she may heal us all. In addition, the Forestal had said; It is well that your companions did not accompany you. The woman of your world would raise grim shades here. The simple recollection of such things brought back Linden's fear.
A fear which had made its meaning clear in lust and darkness when Gibbon-Raver had touched her and affirmed that she was evil.
But she was another woman now. She had found the curative use of her health-sense, the access to beauty. She had told Covenant the stories of her parents, drawn some of their sting from her heart. She had learned to call her hunger for power by its true name. And she knew what she wanted Covenant's love. And the end of the Sunbane.
Smiling grimly, she replied, “Try to stop me.”
She expected her answer to relieve him. But he only nodded, and she saw that he still had not said what was in him. Several false starts passed like shadows across the background of his expression. In an effort to reach him, she added, "I need the relief. The sooner I get out of the Sunbane, the saner I'll be.”
“Linden- ” He said her name as if she were not making his way easier. “When we were in Mithil Stonedown-and Sunder told us he might have to kill his mother- “ He swallowed roughly. “You said he should be allowed to put her out of her misery. If that was what he wanted.” He looked at her now with the death of her mother written plainly in his gaze. “Do you still believe that?”
She winced involuntarily. She would have preferred to put his question aside until she knew why he asked it. But his frank need was insistent. Carefully, she said, “She was in terrible pain. I think people who're suffering like that have the right to die. But mercy killing isn't exactly merciful to the people who have to do it. I don't like what it does to them.” She strove to sound detached, impersonal; but the hurt of the question was too acute. “I don't like what it did to me. If you can call what I did mercy instead of murder.”
He made a gesture that faltered and fell like a failed assuagement, His voice was soft; but it betrayed a strange ague. “What're you going to do if something's happened to Andelain? If you can't get out of the Sunbane? Caer-Caveral knew he wasn't going to last. Foul's corrupted everything else. What'll we do?” His larynx jerked up and down like a presage of panic. “I can stand whatever I have to. But not that. Not that”
He looked so belorn and defenceless that she could not bear it. Tears welled in her eyes. “Maybe it'll be all right,” she breathed. "You can hope. It's held out this long. It can last a little longer.”
But down in the cold, dark roots of her mind she was thinking. If it doesn't, I don't care what happens. I'll tear that bastard's heart out. I'll get the power somewhere, and I'll tear his heart out.
She kept her thoughts to herself. Yet Covenant seemed to sense the violence inside her. Instead of reaching out to her for comfort, he withdrew into his certainty. Wrapped in decisions and perceptions she did not understand and could not share, he remained apart from her throughout the night
A long time passed before she grasped that he did not mean to reject her. He was trying to prepare himself for the day ahead.
But the truth was plain in the sharp, grey dawn, when he rolled, bleak and tense, out of his blankets to kiss her. He was standing on an inner precipice, and his balance was fragile. The part of him which had been fused in the Banefire did not waver; but the vessel bearing that sure alloy looked as brittle as an old bone. Yet in spite of his trepidation he made the effort to smile at her.
She replied with a grimace because she did not know how to protect him.
While Pitchwife prepared a meal for the company Covenant went over to Sunder. Kneeling behind the Graveler, he massaged Sunder's locked shoulders and neck with his numb fingers.
Sunder did not react to the gesture. He was aware of nothing except Hollian's pallid form and his own fixed purpose. To Linden's health-sense, his body ached with the weakness of inanition. And she felt the hot blade of the krill scalding his unshielded belly under his jerkin. But he seemed to draw strength from that pain as if it were the promise that kept him alive.
After a while, Covenant rejoined the two Giants and Linden. “Maybe he'll meet her in Andelain,” he sighed. “Maybe she'll be able to get through to him.”
“Let us pray for that outcome,” muttered the First. "His endurance must fail soon.”
Covenant nodded. As he chewed bread and dried fruit for breakfast, he went on nodding to himself like a man who had no other hope.
A short time later, the sun rose beyond the rim of the world; and the companions stood on the rain-swept sheetrock to meet the daybreak.
It crested the horizon in a flaring of emerald, cast green spangles up the swift, broken surface of the River.
At the sight, Linden went momentarily weak with relief. She had not realized how much she had feared another sun of rain.
Warmth: the fertile sun gave warmth. It eased the vehemence of the current, softened the chill of the water. And it shone on her nerves like the solace of dry, fire-warmed blankets. Supported by the First, with Covenant beside her and Pitchwife and Sunder only a few short strokes away, she rode the Soulsease and thought for the first time that perhaps the River had not been gratuitously named.
Yet relief did not blind her to what was happening to the earth on either side of the watercourse. The kindness of the fertile sun was an illusion, a trick performed by the River's protection. On the banks, vegetation squirmed out of the ground like a ghoul-ridden host. Flailed up from their roots, vines and grasses sprawled over the rims of the channel. Shrubs raised their branches as if they were on fire; trees clawed their way into the air, as frantic as the damned. And she found that her own relative safety only accentuated the sensations pouring at her from the wild, unwilling growth. She was floating through a wilderness of voiceless anguish: the torment around her was as loud as shrieks. Tortured out of all Law, the trees and plants had no defence, could do nothing for themselves except grow and grow-and hurl their dumb hurt into the sky.
Perhaps after all the Forestal of Andelain was gone. How long could he bear to hear these cries and be helpless?