Twenty One: Sending

SOMETIME during the night, he wandered close to consciousness. He was being rocked on the back of a Courser. Arms reached around him from behind and knotted together over his heart. They supported him like bands of stone. Haruchai arms.

Someone said tensely, “Are you not a healer? You must succour him.”

“No.” Linden's reply sounded small and wan, and complete. It made him moan deep in his throat.

Glints of rukh-fire hurt his eyes. When he shut out the sight, he faded away once more.

The next time he looked up, he saw the grey of dawn in fragments through the monstrous jungle. The lightening of the sky lay directly ahead of him. He was mounted on Din, with Memla before him and Brinn behind. Another Courser, carrying Ceer and Hergrom, led the way along the line Memla created with her rukh. The rest of the company followed Din.

As Covenant fumbled toward wakefulness, Memla's path ran into an area of relatively clear ground under the shade of a towering stand of rhododendron. There she halted. Over her shoulder, she called to the company, “Remain mounted. The Coursers will spare us from the Sunbane.”

Behind him, Covenant heard Sunder mutter, “Then it is true—”

But Hergrom dropped to the ground, began to accept supplies handed down by Ceer; and Brinn said, “The Haruchai do not share this need to be warded.”

Immune? Covenant wondered dimly. Yes. How else had so many of them been able to reach Revelstone unwarped?

Then the sun began to rise, sending spangles of crimson and misery through the vegetation. Once again, the eh-Brand had foretold the Sunbane accurately.

When the first touch of the sun was past, Memla ordered the Coursers to their knees, controlling them all with her command. The company began to dismount.

Covenant shrugged off Brinn's help and tried to stand alone. He found that he could. He felt as pale and weak as an invalid; but his muscles were at least able to hold his weight.

Unsteadily, he turned to look back westward through the retreating night for some sign of the na-Mhoram's Grim.

The horizon seemed clear.

Near him, Sunder and Stell had descended from one Courser, Hollian and Harn from another. Cail helped Linden down from the fifth beast. Covenant faced her with his frailty and concern; but she kept her gaze to herself, locked herself in her loneliness as if the very nerves of her eyes, the essential marrow of her bones, had been humiliated past bearing.

He left her alone. He did not know what to do, and felt too tenuous to do it.

While the Haruchai prepared food for the company—dried meat, bread, fruit, and metheglin—Memla produced from one of her sacks a large leather pouch of distilled voure, the pungent sap Covenant's friends had once used to ward off insects under the sun of pestilence. Carefully, she dabbed the concentrate on each, of her companions, excluding only Vain. Covenant nodded at her omission. Perhaps rukh-fire could harm the Demondim-spawn. The Sunbane could not.

Covenant ate slowly and thoroughly, feeding his body's poverty. But all the time, a weight of apprehension impended toward him from the west. He had seen During Stonedown, had seen what the Grim could do. With an effort, he found his voice to ask Memla how long the raising of a Grim took.

She was clearly nervous. “That is uncertain,” she muttered. “The size of the Grim, and its range, must be considered.” Her gaze flicked to his face, leaving an almost palpable mark of anxiety across his cheek. “I read them. Here.” Her hands tightened on her rukh. “It will be very great.”

Very great, Covenant murmured. And he was so weak. He pressed his hands to the krill, and tried to remain calm.

A short time later, the company remounted. Memla drew on the Banefire to open a way for the huge Coursers. Again, Hergrom and Ceer—on Annoy, Memla said: the names of the beasts seemed important to her, as if she loved them in her blunt fashion—went first, followed by Covenant, Brinn, and the Rider on Din, then by Cail and Linden on Clash, Sunder and Stell on Clang, Harn and Hollian on Clangor. Vain brought up the rear as if he were being sucked along without volition in the wake of the Coursers.

Covenant dozed repeatedly throughout the day. He had been too severely drained; he could not keep himself awake. Whenever the company paused for food, water, and rest, he consumed all the aliment he was given, striving to recover some semblance of strength. But between stops the rocking of Din's stride unmoored his awareness, so that he rode tides of dream and dread and insects, and could not anchor himself.

In periods of wakefulness, he knew from the rigidity of Mania's back that she wanted to flee and flee, and never stop. She, too, knew vividly what the Grim could do. But, toward evening, her endurance gave out. Under the shelter of a prodigious Gilden, she halted the quest for the night.

At first, while she started a fire, the air thronged with flying bugs of every description; and the boughs and leaves of the tree seethed with things which crawled and bored. But voure protected the company. And gradually, as dusk seeped into the jungle, macerating the effect of the Sunbane, the insects began to disappear.

Their viscid stridulation faded as they retreated into gestation or sleep. Memla seated her weary bones beside the fire, dismissed the Coursers, and let the Haruchai care for her companions.

Sunder and Hollian seemed tired, as if they had not slept for days; but they were sturdy, with funds of stamina still untapped. Though they knew of the Grim, at least by rumour, their relief at escaping Revelstone outweighed their apprehension. They stood and moved together as if their imprisonment had made them intimate. Sunder seemed to draw ease from the eh-Brand, an anodyne for his old self-conflicts; her youth and her untormented sense of herself were a balm to the Graveller, who had shed his own wife and son and had chosen to betray his people for Covenant's sake. And she, in turn, found support and encouragement in his knotted resourcefulness, his determined struggle for conviction. They both had lost so much; Covenant was relieved to think that they could comfort each other. He could not have given them comfort.

But their companionship only emphasized Linden's isolation in his eyes. The Raver had done something to her. And Covenant, who had experience with such things, dreaded knowing what it was—and dreaded the consequences of not knowing.

As he finished his meal, he arrived at the end of his ability to support his ignorance. He was sitting near the fire. Memla rested, half-asleep, on one side of him. On the other sat Sunder and Hollian. Four of the Haruchai stood guard beyond the tree. Brinn and Cail moved silently around the fringes of the Gilden, alert for peril. Vain stood at the edge of the light like the essence of all black secrets. And among them, across the fire from Covenant, Linden huddled within herself, with her arms clasped around her knees and her eyes fixed on the blaze, as if she were a complete stranger.

He could not bear it. He had invested so much hope in her and knew so little about her; he had to know why she was so afraid. But he had no idea how to confront her. Her hidden wound made her untouchable. So for his own sake, as well as for the sake of his companions, he cleared his throat and began to tell his tale.

He left nothing out. From Andelain and the Dead to Stone-might Woodhelven, from Vain's violence to Bamako's rhysh, from his run across the certer Plains to Memla's revelation of the Clave's mendacity, he told it all. And then he described the sooth-tell as fully as he could. His hands would not remain still as he spoke; so much of the memory made him writhe. He tugged at his beard, knitted his fingers together, clutched his left fist over his wedding band, and told his friends what he had witnessed.

He understood now why the Raver had been willing to let him see the truth of the Land's history. Lord Foul wanted him to perceive the fetters of action and consequence which bound him to his guilt, wanted him to blame himself for the destruction of the Staff, and for the Sunbane, and for every life the Clave sacrificed. So that he would founder in culpability, surrender his ring in despair and self-abhorrence. Lord Foul, who laughed at lepers. At the last there will be but one choice for you. In that context, the venom in him made sense. It gave him power he could not control. Power to kill people. Guilt. It was a prophecy of his doom—a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That, too, he explained, hoping Linden would raise her eyes, look at him, try to understand. But she did not. Her mouth stretched into severity; but she held to her isolation. Even when he detailed how the seeds planted by his Dead had led him to conceive a quest for the One Tree, intending to make a new Staff of Law so that thereby he could oppose Lord Foul and contest the Sunbane without self-abandonment, even then she did not respond. Finally, he fell silent, bereft of words.

For a time, the company remained still with him. No one asked any questions; they seemed unwilling to probe the pain he had undergone. But then Sunder spoke. To answer Covenant, he told what had happened to Linden, Hollian, and him after Covenant had entered Andelain.

He described Santonin and the Stonemight, described the Rider's coercion, described the way in which he and Hollian had striven to convince Gibbon that Covenant was lost or dead. But after that, he had not much to tell. He had been cast into a cell with little food and water, and less hope. Hollian's plight had been the same. Both had heard the clamour of Covenant's first entrance into the hold, and nothing more.

Then Covenant thought that surely Linden would speak. Surely she would complete her part of the tale. But she did not. She hid her face against her knees and sat huddled there as if she were bracing herself against a memory full of whips.

“Linden.” How could he leave her alone? He needed the truth from her. “Now you know how Kevin must have felt.”

Kevin Landwaster, last of Berek's line. Linden had said, I don't believe in evil. Kevin also had tried not to believe in evil. He had unwittingly betrayed the Land by failing to perceive Lord Foul's true nature in time, and had thereby set the Despiser on the path to victory. Thus he had fallen into despair. Because of what he had done, he had challenged the Despiser to the Ritual of Desecration, hoping to destroy Lord Foul by reaving the Land. But in that, too, he had failed. He had succeeded at laying waste the Land he loved, and at losing the Staff of Law; but Lord Foul had endured.

All this Covenant told her. “Don't you see?” he said, imploring her to hear him. “Despair is no answer. It's what Foul lives on. Whatever happened to you, it doesn't have to be like this.” Linden, listen to me!

But she did not listen, gave no sign that she was able to hear him. If he had not seen the shadows of distress shifting behind her eyes, he might have believed that she had fallen back into the coma which Gibbon had levied upon her.

Sunder sat glowering as if he could not choose between his empathy for Linden and his understanding of Covenant. Hollian's dark eyes were blurred with tears. Brinn and Cail watched as if they were the models for Vain's impassivity. None of them offered Covenant any help.

He tried a different tack. “Look at Vain.” Linden! “Tell me what you see.”

She did not respond.

“I don't know whether or not I can trust him. I don't have your eyes. I need you to tell me what he is.”

She did not move. But her shoulders tautened as if she were screaming within herself.

“That old man.” His voice was choked by need and fear. “On Haven Farm. You saved his life. He told you to Be true.”

She flinched. Jerking up her head, she gaped at him with eyes as injured as if they had been gouged into the clenched misery of her soul. Then she was on her feet, fuming like a magma of bitterness. “You!” she cried. “You keep talking about desecration. This is your doing. Why did you have to sell yourself for Joan? Why did you have to get us into this? Don't you call that desecration?”

“Linden.” Her passion swept him upright; but he could not reach out to her. The fire lay between them as if she had lit it there in her fury.

“Of course you don't. You can't see. You don't know” Her hands clawed the air over her breasts as if she wanted to tear her flesh. “You think it will help if you go charging off on some crazy quest. Make a new Staff of Law.” She was savage with gall. “You don't count, and you don't even know it!”

He repeated her name. Sunder and Hollian had risen to their feet. Memla held her rukh ready, and Cail stood poised nearby, as if both Rider and Haruchai felt violence in the air.

“What did he do to you?” What did that bastard do to you?

“He said you don't count!” Abruptly, she was spouting words, hurling them at him as if he were the cause of her distress. “All they care about is your ring. The rest is me. He said, 'You have been especially chosen for this desecration. You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth.'” Her voice thickened like blood around the memory, “Because I can see. That's how they're going to make me do what they want. By torturing me with what I see, and feel, and hear. You're making me do exactly what they want!”

The next instant, her outburst sprang to a halt. Her hands leaped to her face, trying to block out visions. Her body went rigid, as if she were on the verge of convulsions; a moan tore its way between her teeth. Then she sagged.

In desolation, she whispered, “He touched me.”

Touched—?

“Covenant.” She dropped her hands, let him see the full anguish in her visage. “You've got to get me out of here. Back to where I belong. Where my life means something. Before they make me kill you.”

“I know,” he said, because she had to have an answer. “That's another reason why I want to find the One Tree.” But within himself he felt suddenly crippled. You don't count. He had placed so much hope in her, in the possibility that she was free of Lord Foul's manipulations; and now that hope lay in wreckage. “The Lords used the Staff to call me here.” In one stroke, he had been reft of everything. “A Staff is the only thing I know of that can send us back.” Everything except the krill, and his old intransigence.

Especially chosen—Hell and blood! He wanted to cover his face; he could have wept like a child. But Linden's eyes clung to him desperately, trying to believe in him. Sunder and Hollian held each other against a fear they could not name. And Memla's countenance was blunt-moulded into a shape of sympathy, as if she knew what it meant to be discounted. Only the Haruchai appeared unmoved—the Haruchai, and Vain.

When Linden asked, “Your ring?” he met her squarely.

“I can't control it.”

Abruptly, Memla's expression became a flinch of surprise, as if he had uttered something appalling.

He ignored her. While his heart raged for grief, as if tears were a debt which he owed to his mortality and could not pay, he stretched out his arms. There in front of all his companions he gave himself a VSE.

Ah, you are stubborn yet.

Yes. By God. Stubborn.

Acting with characteristic detached consideration, Brinn handed Covenant a pouch of metheglin. Covenant lifted it between himself and his friends, so that they could not see his face, and drank it dry. Then he walked away into the darkness around the Gilden, used the night to hide him. After a time, he lay down among the things he had lost, and closed his eyes.

Brinn roused him with the dawn, got him to his feet in time to meet the second rising of the sun of pestilence, protected by his boots. The rest of the quest was already awake. Sunder and Hollian had joined Memla on pieces of stone; the Haruchai were busy preparing food; Linden stood gazing at the approaching incarnadine. Her face was sealed against its own vulnerability; but when she noticed Covenant, her eyes acknowledged him sombrely. After the conflicts of the previous evening, her recognition touched him like a smile.

He found that he felt stronger. But with recovery came a renewal of fear. The na-Mhoram's Grim-

Memla bore herself as if throughout the night she had not forgotten that peril. Her aging features were lined with apprehension, and her hands trembled on her rukh. To answer Covenant's look, she murmured, “Still he raises it, and is not content. It will be a Grim to rend our souls.” For a moment, her eyes winced to his face as if she needed reassurance. But then she jerked away, began snapping at her companions to make them hurry.

Soon the company was on its way, moving at a hard canter down the path which Memla invoked from the Banefire. Her urgency and Covenant's tight dread infected the Stonedownors, marked even Linden. The quest rode in silence, as if they could feel the Grim poised like a blade at the backs of their necks.

The jungle under the sun of pestilence aggravated Covenant's sense of impending disaster. The insects thronged around him like incarnations of disease. Every malformed bough and bush was a-crawl with malformed bugs. Some of the trees were so heavily veined with termites that the wood looked leprous. And the smell of rot had become severe. Under the aegis of the Sunbane, his guts ached, half expecting the vegetation to break open and begin suppurating.

Time dragged. Weakness crept through his muscles again. When the company finally rode into the relief of sunset, his neck and shoulders throbbed from the strain of looking backward for some sign of the Grim. Shivers ran through the marrow of his bones. As soon as Memla picked a camping place under the shelter of a megalithic stand of eucalyptus, he dropped to the ground, hoping to steady himself on the Earth's underlying granite. But his hands and feet were too numb to feel anything.

Around him, his companions dismounted. Almost at once, Linden went over to Hollian. The flesh of Linden's face was pale and taut, stretched tight over her skull. She accosted the eh-Brand purposefully, but then had to fumble for words. “The insects,” she murmured. “The smell. It's worse. Worse than any other sun. I can't shut it all out.” Her eyes watched the way her hands clung together, as if only that knot held her in one piece. “I can't—What's it going to be tomorrow?”

Sunder had moved to stand near Hollian. As Linden fell silent, he nodded grimly. “Never in all my life have I faced a sun of pestilence and encountered so little harm.” His tone was hard. “I had not known the Clave could journey so untouched by that which is fear and abhorrence to the people of the Land. And now ur-Lord Covenant teaches us that the Clave's immunity has been purchased by the increase rather than the decline of the Sunbane.” His voice darkened as if he were remembering all the people he had shed. “I do not misdoubt him. But I, too, desire tidings of the morrow's sun.”

Memla indicated with a shrug that such tidings could not alter her anxiety. But Covenant joined Linden and Sunder. He felt suddenly sickened by the idea that perhaps the soothtell had been a lie designed by Gibbon-Raver to mislead him. If two days of rain were followed by only two days of pestilence—Gripping himself, he waited for Hollian's response.

She acceded easily. Her light smile reminded him that she was not like Sunder. With her Iianar and her skill, she had always been able to touch the Sunbane for the benefit of others; she had never had to kill people to obtain blood. Therefore she did not loathe her own capabilities as Sunder did his.

She stepped a short distance away to give herself space, then took out her dirk and wand. Seating herself on the leaves which littered the ground, she summoned her concentration. Covenant, Linden, and Sunder watched intently as she placed the Iianar on her lap, gripped her dirk in her left hand and directed the point against her right palm. The words of invocation soughed past her lips. They clasped the company like a liturgy of worship for something fatal. Even the Haruchai left their tasks to stand ready. The thought that she was about to cut herself made Covenant scowl; but he had long ago left behind the days when he could have protested what she was doing.

Slowly, she drew a small cut on her palm. As blood welled from the incision, she closed her fingers on the Iianar. Dusk had deepened into night around the quest, concealing her from the watchers. Yet even Covenant's impercipient senses could feel her power thickening like motes of fire concatenating towards flame. For a bated moment, the air was still. Then she sharpened her chant, and the wand took light.

Red flames bloomed like Sunbane orchids. They spread up into the air and down her forearm to the ground. Crimson tendrils curled about her as if she were being overgrown. They seemed bright; but they cast no illumination; the night remained dark.

Intuitively, Covenant understood her fire. With chanting and blood and Iianar, she reached out toward the morrow's sun; and the flames took their colour from what that sun would be. Her fire was the precise hue of the sun's pestilential aura.

A third sun of pestilence. He sighed his relief softly. Here, at least, he had no reason to believe that the soothtell had been false.

But before the eh-Brand could relax her concentration, release her foretelling, the fire abruptly changed.

A streak of blackness as absolute as Vain's skin shot from the wood, scarred the flames with ebony. At first, it was only a lash across the crimson. But it grew, expanded among the flames until it dominated them, obscured them.

Quenched them.

Instantly, night covered the companions, isolating them from each other. Covenant could perceive nothing except a fault tang of smoke in the air, as if Hollian's wand had been in danger of being consumed.

He swore hoarsely under his breath and swung out his arms until he touched Brian on one side, Linden on the other. Then he heard feet spring through the leaves and heard Sunder cry, “Hollian!”

The next moment, Memla also cried out in horror. “Sending!” Fire raged from her rukh, cracked like a flail among the trees, making the night lurid. “It comes!” Covenant saw Ceer standing behind the Rider as if to protect her from attack. The other Haruchai formed a defensive ring around the company.

“Gibbon!” Memla howled. “Abomination!” Her fire savaged the air as ft she were trying to strike at Revelstone from a distance of nearly two score leagues. “By all the Seven Hells—!”

Covenant reacted instinctively. He surged into the range of Memla's fire and gripped her forearms to prevent her from striking at him. “Memla!” he yelled into her face. “Memla! How much time have we got?”

His grip or his demand reached her. Her gaze came into focus on him. With a convulsive shudder, she dropped her fire, let darkness close over the quest. When she spoke, her voice came out of the night like the whispering of condor wings.

"There is time. The Grim cannot instantly cross so many leagues. Perhaps as much as a day remains to us.

“But it is the na-Mhoram's Grim, and has been two days in the raising. Such a sending might break Revelstone itself.”

She took a breath which trembled. “Ur-Lord, we cannot evade this Grim. It will follow my rukh and rend us utterly.” Her voice winced in her throat. “I had believed that the wild magic would give us hope. But if it is beyond your control—”

At Covenant's back, a small flame jumped into life and caught wood. Sunder had lit a faggot. He held it up like a torch, lifting the company out of the dark.

Hollian was gasping through her teeth, fighting not to cry out. The violation of her foretelling had hurt her intimately.

“That's right,” Covenant gritted. “I can't control it.” His hands manacled Memla's wrists, striving to keep her from hysteria, “Hang on. Think. We've got to do something about this.” His eyes locked hers. “Can you leave your rukh behind?”

“Covenant!” she wailed in immediate anguish. “It is who I am! I am nothing to you without it.” He tightened his grasp. She flinched away from his gaze. Her voice became a dry moan. “Without my rukh, I cannot part the trees. And I cannot command the Coursers. It is the power to which they have been bred. Losing it, my hold upon them will be lost. They will scatter from us. Perhaps they will turn against us.” Her mien appeared to be crumbling in the unsteady torchlight. “This doom is upon my head,” she breathed. “In ignorance and folly, I lured you to Revelstone.”

“Damnation!” Covenant rasped, cursing half to himself. He felt trapped; and yet he did not want Memla to blame herself. He had asked for her help. He wrestled down his dismay. “All right,” he panted. “Call the Coursers. Let's try to outrun it.”

She gaped at him. “It is the Grim! It cannot be outrun.”

“Goddamn it, he's only one Raver!” His fear made him livid. “The farther he has to send it, the weaker it's going to be. Let's try!”

For one more moment, Memla could not recover her courage. But then the muscles of her face tightened, and a look of resolution or fatality came into her eyes. “Yes, ur-Lord,” she gritted. “It will be weakened somewhat. Let us make the attempt.”

As he released her, she began shouting for the Coursers.

They came out of the night like huge chunks of darkness. The Haruchai threw sacks of supplies and bundles of firewood onto the broad backs. Covenant wheeled to face his companions.

Sunder and Hollian stood behind Linden. She crouched among the leaves, with her hands clamped over her face. The Stonedownors made truncated gestures toward her but did not know how to reach her. Her voice came out as if it were being throttled.

“I can't—”

Covenant exploded. “Move!”

She flinched, recoiled to her feet. Sunder and Hollian jerked into motion as if they were breaking free of a trance. Cail abruptly swept Linden from the ground and boosted her lightly onto Clash. Scrambling forward, Covenant climbed up behind Memla. In a whirl, he saw Sunder and Hollian on their mounts, saw the Haruchai spring into position, saw Memla's rukh gutter, then burst alive like a scar across the dark.

At once, the Coursers launched themselves down the line of Memla's path.

The night on either side of her fire seemed to roil like thunder-heads. Covenant could not see past her back; he feared that Din would careen at any moment into a failure of the path, crash against boulders, plunge into lurking ravines or gullies. But more than that, he feared his ring, feared the demand of power which the Grim would put upon him.

Memla permitted no disaster. At unexpected moments, her line veered past sudden obstacles; yet with her fire and her will she kept the company safe and swift. She was running for her life, for Covenant's life, for the hope of the Land; and she took her Coursers through the ruinous jungle like bolts from a crossbow.

They ran while the moon rose—ran as it arced overhead—ran and still ran after it had set. The Coursers were creatures of the Sunbane, and did not tire. Just after dawn, Memla slapped them to a halt. When Covenant dismounted, his legs trembled. Linden moved as if her entire body had been beaten with clubs. Even Sunder and Hollian seemed to have lost their hardiness. But Memla's visage was set in lines of extremity; and she held her rukh as if she strove to tune her soul to the pitch of iron.

She allowed the company only a brief rest for a meal. But even that time was too long. Without warning, Stell pointed toward the sun. The mute intensity of his gesture snatched every eye eastward.

The sun stood above the horizon, its sick red aura burning like a promise of infirmity. But the corona was no longer perfect. Its leading edge wore a stark black flaw.

The mark was wedge-shaped, like an attack of ur-viles, and aligned as if it were being hammered into the sun from Revelstone.

Linden's groan was more eloquent than any outcry.

Shouting a curse, Memla drove her companions back to the Coursers. In moments, the quest had remounted, and the beasts raced against black malice.

They could not win. Though Memla's path was strong and true—though the Coursers ran at the full stretch of their great legs—the blackness grew swiftly. By mid-morning, it had devoured half the sun's anadem.

Pressure mounted against Covenant's back. His thoughts took on the rhythm of Din's strides: I must not—Must not—Visions of killing came: ten years or four millennia ago, at the battle of Soaring Woodhelven, he had slain Cavewights. And later, he had driven a knife into the heart of the man who had murdered Lena. He could not think of power except in terms of killing.

He had no control over his ring.

Then the company burst out of thick jungle toward a savannah. There, nothing obstructed the terrain except the coarse grass, growing twice as tall as the Coursers, north, south, and east, and the isolated mounds of rock standing like prodigious cairns at great distances from each other. Covenant had an instant of overview before the company plunged down the last hillside into the savannah. The sky opened; and he could not understand how the heavens remained so untrammelled around such a sun. Then Memla's path sank into the depths of the grass.

The quest ran for another league before Hollian cried over the rumble of hooves, “It conies!”

Covenant flung a look behind him.

A thunderhead as stark as the sun's wound boiled out of the west. Its seething was poised like a fist; and it moved with such swiftness that the Coursers seemed not to be racing at all.

“Run!” he gasped at Memla's back.

As if in contradiction, she wrenched Din to a halt. The Courser skidded, almost fell. Covenant nearly lost his seat. The other beasts veered away, crashing frenetically through the grass. “Heaven and Earth!” Sunder barked. Controlling all the Coursers, Memla sent them wheeling and stamping around her, battering down the grass to clear a large circle.

As the vegetation east of him was crushed, Covenant saw why she had stopped.

Directly across her path marched a furious column of creatures.

For a moment, he thought that they were Cavewights—Cavewights running on all fours in a tight swath sixty feet wide, crowding shoulder to shoulder out of the south in a stream without beginning or end. They had the stocky frames, gangrel limbs, blunt heads of Cavewights. But if these were Cavewights they had been hideously altered by the Sunbane. Chitinous plating armoured their backs and appendages; their fingers and toes had become claws; their chins were split into horned jaws like mandibles. And they had no eyes, no features; their faces had been erased. Nothing marked their fore-skulls except long antennae which hunted ahead of them, searching out their way.

They rushed as if they were running headlong toward prey. The line of their march had already been torn down to bare dirt by the leaders. In their haste, they sounded like the swarming of gargantuan ants—formication punctuated by the sharp clack of jaws.

“Hellfire!” Covenant panted. The blackness around the sun was nearly complete; the Grim was scant leagues away, and closing rapidly. And he could see no way past this river of pestilential creatures. If they were of Cavewightish stock—He shuddered at the thought. The Cavewights had been mighty earth delvers, tremendously strong. And these creatures were almost as large as horses. If anything interrupted their single-minded march, they would tear even Memla's beasts limb from limb.

Linden began to whimper, then bit herself into silence. Sunder stared at the creatures with dread-glazed eyes. Hollian's hair lay on her shoulders like raven wings, emphasizing her pale features as if she were marked for death. Memla sagged in front of Covenant like a woman with a broken spine.

Turning to Brinn, Covenant asked urgently, “Will it pass?”

In answer, Brinn nodded toward Hergrom and Ceer. Ceer had risen to stand erect on Annoy's back. Hergrom promptly climbed onto Ceer's shoulders, balanced there to gain a view over the grass. A moment later, Brinn reported, “We are farsighted, but the end of this cannot be seen.”

Bloody hell! He was afraid of wild magic, power beyond control or choice. I must not—! But he knew that he would use it if he had to. He could not simply let his companions die.

The thunderhead approached like the blow of an axe. Blackness garroted the sun. The light began to dim.

A rush of protest went through him. Fear or no fear, this doom was intolerable. “All right.” Ignoring the distance to the ground, he dropped from Din's back. “We'll have to fight here.”

Brinn joined him. Sunder and Stell dismounted from Clang, Hollian and Harn from Clangor. Cail pulled Linden down from Clash and set her on her feet. Her hands twitched as if they were searching for courage; but she found none. Covenant tore his gaze away, so that her distress would not make him more dangerous. “Sunder,” he rapped out, “you've got your orcrest. Memla has her rukh. Is there some way you can work together? Can you hit that thing”—he grimaced at the Grim—“before it hits us?”

The cloud was almost overhead. It shed a preternatural twilight across the savannah, quenching the day.

“No.” Memla had not dismounted. She spoke as if her mouth were full of ashes. “There is not time. It is too great.”

Her dismay hurt Covenant like a demand for wild magic. He wanted to shout, I can't control it! Don't you understand? I might kill you all! But she went on speaking as if his power or incapacity had become irrelevant. “You must not die. That is certain.” Her quietness seemed suddenly terrible. “When the way is clear, cross instantly. This march will seal the gap swiftly.” She straightened her shoulders and lifted her face to the sky. “The Grim has found you because of me. Let it be upon my head.”

Before anyone could react, she turned Din and guided it toward the blind rushing creatures. As she moved, she brought up the fire of her rukh, holding it before her like a sabre.

Covenant and Sunder sprang after her. But Brinn and Stell interposed themselves. Cursing, the Graveller fought to break free; but Stell mastered him without effort. Furiously, Sunder shouted, “Release me! Do you not see that she means to die?”

Covenant ignored Sunder: he locked himself to Brinn's flat eyes. Softly, dangerously, he breathed, “Don't do this.”

Brinn shrugged. “I have sworn to preserve your life.”

“Banner took the same Vow.” Covenant did not struggle. But he glared straight at the Haruchai. People have died because of me. How much more do you think I can stand? “That's how Elena got killed. I might have been able to save her.”

The Grim began to boil almost directly above the quest. But the Cavewightlike creatures were unaware of it. They marched on like blind doom, shredding the dirt of the plains.

“Bannor maintained his Vow,” Brinn said, as if it cost him no effort to refute Covenant. "So the old tellers say, and their tale has descended from Bannor himself. It was First Mark Morin, sworn to the High Lord, who failed.“ He nodded toward Ceer. In response, Ceer sprinted after Memla and vaulted lightly onto Din's back. ”We also,“ Brinn concluded, ”will maintain the promise we have made, to the limit of our strength."

But Memla reacted in rage too thick for shouting. “By the Seven Hells!” she panted, “I will not have this. You have sworn nothing to me.” Brandishing her rukh, she faced Ceer. “If you do not dismount, I will burn you with my last breath, and all this company shall die for naught!”

Memla! Covenant tried to yell. But he could not. He had nothing to offer her; his fear of wild magic choked him. Helplessly, he watched as Ceer hesitated, glanced toward Brinn. The Haruchai consulted together in silence, weighing their commitments. Then Ceer sprang to the ground and stepped out of Din's way.

No! Covenant protested. She's going to get herself killed!

He had no time to think. Gloaming occluded the atmosphere. The ravening Grim poised itself above Memla, focused on her fire. The heavens around the cloud remained impossibly cerulean; but the cloud itself was pitch and midnight. It descended as it seethed, dropping toward its victims.

Under it, the air crackled as if it were being scorched.

The Coursers skittered. Sunder took out his orcrest, then seized Hollian's hand and pulled her to the far side of the circle, away from Memla. The Haruchai flowed into defensive positions among the companions and the milling beasts.

Amid the swirl of movement, Vain stood, black under black, as if he were inured to darkness.

Hergrom placed himself near Vain. But Memla was planning to die; Linden was foundering in ill; and Covenant felt outraged by the unanswerable must / must not of his ring. He yelled at Hergrom, “Let him take care of himself!”

The next instant, he staggered to his knees. The air shattered with a heart-stopping concussion. The Grim broke into bits, became intense black flakes floating downward like a fall of snow.

With fearsome slowness, they fell—crystals of sun-darkness, tangible night, force which not even stone could withstand.

Howling defiance, Memla launched fire at the sky.

Din bunched under her and charged out into the march of the creatures. A series of tremendous heaves carried beast and Rider toward the certer of the stream.

The flakes of the Grim drifted in her direction, following the lodestone of her rukh. Its dense certer, the nexus of its might, passed beyond the quest.

The creatures immediately mobbed her mount. Din let out a piercing scream at the tearing of claws and mandibles. Only the plunging of its hooves, the slash of its spurs, the thickness of its coat, protected it.

Then the Grim fell skirling around her head. Her fire blazed: she lashed out, trying to keep herself and Din from being touched. Every flake her flame struck burst in a glare of darkness, and was gone. But for every flake she destroyed, she was assailed by a hundred more.

Covenant watched her in an agony of helplessness, knowing that if he turned to his ring now he could not strike for her without striking her. The Grim was thickest around her; but its edges covered the march as well as the quest. The creatures were swept into confusion as killing bits as big as fists fell among them.

Vermeil shot from Sunder's orcrest toward the darkened sun. Covenant yelled in encouragement. By waving the Sunstone back and forth, the Graveller picked flakes out of the air with his shaft, consuming them before they could reach him or Hollian.

Around the company, the Haruchai dodged like dervishes. They used flails of pampas grass to strike down the flakes. Each flake destroyed the whip which touched it; but the Haruchai snatched up more blades and went on fighting.

Abruptly, Covenant was thrust from his feet. A piece of blackness missed his face. Brinn pitched him past it, then jerked him up again. Heaving Covenant from side to side, Brinn danced among the falling Grim. Several flakes hit where they had been standing. Obsidian flares set fire to the grass.

The grass began to burn in scores of places.

Yet Vain stood motionless, with a look of concentration on his face. Flakes struck his skin, his tunic. Instead of detonating, they melted on him and ran hissing down his raiment, his legs, like water on hot metal.

Covenant gaped at the Demondim-spawn, then lost sight of him as Brinn went dodging through the smoke.

He caught a glimpse of Memla. She fought extravagantly for her life, hurled fire with all the outrage of her betrayal by the na-

Mhoram. But the focus of the Grim formed a mad swarm around her. And the moiling creatures had already torn Din to its knees. In patches, its hide had been bared to the bone.

Without warning, a flake struck the Courser's head. Din collapsed, tumbling the Rider headlong among the creatures.

Memla! Covenant struggled to take hold of his power. But Brinn's thrusting and dodging reft nun of concentration. And already he was too late.

Yet Ceer leaped forward with the calm abandon of the Haruchai. Charging into the savagery, he fought toward Memla.

She regained her feet in a splash of fire. For an instant, she stood, gallant and tattered, hacking fury at the creatures. Ceer almost reached her.

Then Covenant lost her as Brinn tore him out from under a black flurry. Flames and Haruchai reeled about him; the flakes were everywhere. But he fought upright in time to see Memla fall with a scream of darkness in her chest.

As she died and dropped her rukh, the four remaining Coursers went berserk.

They erupted as if only her will had contained the madness of their fear. Yowling among the grassfires, two of them dashed out of the circle and fled across the savannah. Another ploughed into the breach the Grim had made in the march. As it passed, Ceer suddenly appeared at its side. Fighting free of the creatures, he grabbed at the Courser's hair and used the beast to pull him away.

The fourth beast attacked the company. Its vehemence caught the Haruchai unprepared. Its eyes burned scarlet as it plunged against Hergrom, struck him down with its chest.

Hergrom had been helping Cail to protect Linden.

Instantly, the beast reared at her.

Cail tried to shove her aside. She stumbled, fell the wrong way.

Covenant saw her sprawl under the Courser's hooves. One of them clipped her head as the beast stamped, trying to crush her.

Again, the Courser reared.

Cail stood over her. Covenant could not strike without hitting the Haruchai. He fought to run forward.

As the Courser hammered down, Cail caught its legs. For one impossible moment, he held the huge animal off her. Then it began to bend him.

Linden!

With a prodigious effort, Cail heaved the Courser to the side. Its hooves missed Linden as they landed.

Blood appeared. From shoulder to elbow, Cail's left arm had been ripped open by one of the beast's spurs.

It reared again.

Covenant's mind went instantly white with power. But before he could grasp it, use it, Brinn knocked him away from another cluster of flakes. The grass was giddy fire and death, whirling. He flipped to his feet and swung back toward Linden; but his heart had already frozen within him.

As his vision cleared, he saw Sunder hurl a blast of Sunbane-fire which struck the Courser's chest, knocking it to its knees. Lurching upright again, it pounded its pain away from the quest.

But Linden lay under the Grim, surrounded by growing fires, and did not move.