Swinging away from the Haruchai, he almost collided with Sunder and Hollian. They were leaning against each other as if for support. The knots at the corners of Sunder's jaw bulged; a frown of apprehension or dismay incused his forehead. The young eh-Brand's features were pale with anxiety.
The sight was momentarily more than Covenant could bear. Why was he forever so doomed to give pain? With unwanted harshness, he rasped, “You don't have to go.”
Sunder stiffened. Hollian blinked at Covenant as if he had just slapped her face. But before he could master himself enough to apologize, she reached out and placed her hand on his arm. “Ur-Lord, you miscomprehend us.” Her voice was like the simple gesture of her touch. “We have long and long ago given up all thought of refusing you.”
With an effort, Sunder loosened the clenching of his teeth. “That is sooth. Do you not understand this of us? The peril is nothing. We have sojourned so far beyond our knowledge that all perils are become equal. And Linden Avery has said that soon we will be free of the threat of the Clave.”
Covenant stared at the Graveller, at the eh-Brand.
“No, Covenant,” Sunder went on. “Our concern is otherwise. We journey where the Sunbane does not obtain. We do not love the Sunbane. We are not mad. But without it-” He hesitated, then said, “What purpose do we serve? What is our value to you? We have not forgotten Andelain. The Sunbane has made us to be who we are. Perhaps under another sun we will merely burden you.”
The frankness of their uncertainty touched Covenant. He was a leper; he understood perfectly what they were saying. But he believed that the Sunbane could be altered, had to believe that it was not the whole truth of their lives. How else could he go on? Against the sudden thickness in his throat, he said, “You're my friends. Let's try it and see.”
Fumbling for self-control, he went to get something to eat.
His companions joined him. In silence, they ate as if they were chewing the gristle of their apprehensions.
Shortly, Ceer brought word of a path down the cliff. Hergrom and Cail began to load the Coursers. Long before Covenant had found any courage, the quest was mounted and moving.
Ceer, Hergrom, and Cail led the way on Annoy. With Linden's care and the native health of the Haruchai, Cail had essentially recovered from his wound. Brinn, Linden, and Covenant followed on Clash. Then came Harn and Hollian on Clangor, Stell and Sunder on Clang. Vain brought up the rear.
They went northward for half a league to a wide trail cut into the face of Landsdrop. This was a vestige of one of the ancient Giantways, by which the Unhomed had travelled between Seareach and Revelstone. Covenant locked his hands in Clash's hair, and fought his vertigo as the company began to descend.
The sheer drop to the Lower Land pulled at him constantly. But the trail had been made by Giants; though it angled and doubled steeply, it was wide enough for the huge Coursers. Still, the swing of Clash's back made him feel that he was about to be pitched over the edge. Even during a brief rest, when Brinn halted the company to refill the waterskins from a rill trickling out of the cliff-face, the Flat seemed to reel upward at him like a green storm. He spun, sweating, down the last slope and lurched out into the humid air of the foothills with a pain in his chest, as if he had forgotten how to breathe.
The foothills were clear for some distance before they rolled down into the peril of the Sarangrave. Brinn took the Coursers forward at a clattering run, as if he meant to plunge straight into the verdant sea. But he stopped on the verge of the thick marshgrass which lapped the hills. For a moment, he surveyed the quest, studying Vain briefly, as if he wondered what to expect from the Demondim-spawn. Then he addressed Linden.
“Chosen,” he said with flat formality, “the old tellers say that the Bloodguard had eyes such as yours. That is not true of us. We understand caution. But we also understand that your sight surpasses ours. You must watch with me, lest we fall to the snares of the Sarangrave.”
Linden swallowed. Her posture was taut, keyed beyond speech by dread. But she answered with a stiff nod.
Now Clash led. Covenant glared out past Linden and Brinn, past Clash's massive head, toward the Sarangrave. The hillside descended into a breeze-ruffled lake of marshgrass, and beyond the grass stood the first gnarled brush of the Flat. Dark shrubs piled toward trees which concealed the horizon. The green of their leaves seemed vaguely poisonous under the pale red sun. In the distance, a bird cried, then fell silent. The Sarangrave was still, as if it waited with bated breath. Covenant could hardly force himself to say, “Let's go.”
Brinn nudged Clash forward. Bunched together like a fist, the company entered Sarangrave Flat.
Clash stepped into the marshgrass, and immediately sank to its knees in hidden mire.
“Chosen,” Brinn murmured in reproof as the Courser lumbered backward to extricate itself.
Linden winced. “Sorry. I'm not-” She took a deep breath, straightened her back. “Solid ground to the left.”
Clash veered in that direction. This time, the footing held. Soon, the beast was breasting its way through chest-high grass.
An animal the size of a crocodile suddenly thrashed out from under Clash's hooves-a predator with no taste for such large prey. Clash shied; but the rukh steadied it quickly. Clinging to his seat, Covenant forced his gaze ahead and tried not to believe that he was riding into a morass from which there was no outlet and no escape.
Guided by Linden's senses, Brinn led the company toward the trees. In spite of past suns, the growth here was of normal size; yet even to Covenant's blunt perceptions, the atmosphere felt brooding and chancrous, like an exhalation of disease, the palpable leprosy of pollution.
As they reached the trees, the quest passed under thickening blotches of shade. At first, clear ground lay between the trunks, wind-riffled swaths of bland grass concealed things at which Covenant could not guess. But as the riders moved inward, the trees intensified. The grass gave way to shallow puddles, stretches of mud which sucked like hunger at the hooves of the Coursers. Branches and vines variegated the sky. At the edges of hearing came the sounds of water, almost subliminal, as if wary behemoths were drinking from a nearby pool. The ambience of the Sarangrave settled in Covenant's chest like a miasma.
Abruptly, an iridescent bird blundered, squalling, skyward out of the brush. His guts lurched. Sweating, he gaped about him. The jungle was complete; he could not see more than fifty feet in any direction. The Coursers followed a path which wandered out of sight between squat grey trees with cracked bark and swollen trunks. But when he looked behind him, he could see no sign of the way he had come. The Sarangrave sealed itself after the company. Somewhere not far away, he could hear water dripping, like the last blood from Marid's throat.
His companions' nerves were raw. Sunder's eyes seemed to flinch from place to place. Hollian's mien wore a look of unconscious fright, as if she were a child expecting to be terrified. Linden sat hunched forward, gripping Brinn's shoulders. Whenever she spoke, her voice was thin and tense, etiolated by her vulnerability to the ill on all sides. Yet Vain looked as careless as the accursed, untouched even by the possibility of wrong.
Covenant felt that his lungs were filling up with moisture.
The Coursers seemed to share his difficulty. He could hear them snuffling stertorously. They grew restive by degrees, choppy of gait, alternately headstrong and timorous. What do they-? he began. But the question daunted him, and he did not finish it.
At noon, Brinn halted the company on a hillock covered with pimpernels, and defended on two sides by a pool of viscid sludge which smelled like tar. In it, pale flagellant creatures swam. They broke the surface, spread sluggish ripples about them, then disappeared. They looked like corpses, wan and necrotic, against the darkness of the fluid.