“Linden!” Because he did not know what else to do, he barked, “Haven't you even got the guts to go on living?”
She gasped, inhaled. Her eyes swept into focus on him like swords leaping from their scabbards. The odd sunlight gave her face an aspect of dark fury.
“I'm sorry,” he said thickly. Her reaction made him ache as badly as helplessness. “You were so-” Unwittingly, he had trespassed on something which he had no right to touch. “I never wanted this to happen to you.”
She rejected his regret with a violent shake of her head. “Now,” “ she panted, ”you're going to tell me the other explanation."
He nodded. Slowly, he released her, withdrew to sit with his back against the parapet. He did not understand her strange combination of strength and weakness; but at the moment his incomprehension was unimportant. “The inside explanation.”
A deep weariness ran through him. He fought it for the words he needed. “We're in a place called the Land. It's a different world-like being on a completely different planet. These mountains are the Southron Range, the southern edge. All the rest of the Land is west and north and east from us. This place is Kevin's Watch. Below us, and a bit to the west, there used to be a village called Mithil Stonedown. Revelstone is- ”But the thought of Revelstone recalled the Lords; he shied away from it. "I've been here before.
“Most of what I can tell you about it won't make much sense until you see it for yourself. But there's one thing that's important right now. The Land has an enemy. Lord Foul.” He studied her, trying to read her response. But her eyes brandished darkness at him, nothing else. “For thousands of years,” he went on, “Foul has been trying to destroy the Land. It's-sort of a prison for him. He wants to break out.” He groaned inwardly at the impossibility of making what he had to say acceptable to someone who had never had the experience. "He translated us out of our world. Brought us here. He wants us to serve him. He thinks he can manipulate us into helping him destroy the Land.
“We have power here.” He prayed he was speaking the truth. “Since we come from outside, we aren't bound by the Law, the natural order that holds everything together. That's why Foul wants us, wants to use us. We can do things nobody else here can.”
To spare himself the burden of her incredulity, he leaned his head against the parapet and gazed up at the mountains. “The necessity of freedom,” he breathed. “As long as we aren't bound by any Law, or anybody-or any explanation,” he said to ease his conscience, “we're powerful.” But I'm not free. I've already chosen. "That's what it comes down to. Power. The power that healed me.
"That old man-Somehow, he knows what's going on in the Land. And he's no friend of Foul's. He chose you for something-I don't know what. Or maybe he wanted to reassure himself. Find out if you're the kind of person Foul can manipulate.
“As for Joan, she was Foul's way of getting at me. She was vulnerable to him. After what happened the last time I was here, I wasn't. He used her to get me to step into that triangle by my own choice. So he could summon me here.” What I don't understand, he sighed, is why he had to do it that way. It wasn't like that before. “Maybe it's an accident that you're here, too. But I don't think so.”
Linden glanced down at the stone as if to verify that it was substantial, then touched the bruise behind her ear. Frowning, she shifted into a sitting position. Now she did not look at him. “I don't understand,” she said stiffly. "First you tell me this is a dream-then you say it's real. First you're dying back there in the woods-then you're healed by some kind of-some kind of magic. First Lord Foul is a figment-then he's real.“ In spite of her control, her voice trembled slightly. ”Which is it? You can't have it both ways.“ Her fist clenched. ”You could be dying."
Ah, I have to have it both ways, Covenant murmured. It's like vertigo. The answer is in the contradiction-in the eye of the paradox. But he did not utter his thought aloud.
Yet Linden's question relieved him. Already, her restless mind-that need which had rejected his efforts to warn her, had driven her to follow him to his doom-was beginning to grapple with her situation. If she had the strength to challenge him, then her crisis was past, at least for the moment. He found himself smiling in spite of his fear.
“It doesn't matter,” he replied. “Maybe this is real-maybe it isn't. You can believe whatever you want. I'm just offering you a frame of reference, so you'll have some place to start.”
Her hands kept moving, touching herself, the stone, as if she needed tactile sensation to assure her of her own existence. After a moment, she said, “You've been here before.” Her anger had turned to pain. “It's your life. Tell me how to understand.”
“Face it,” he said without hesitation. “Go forward. Find out what happens-what's at stake. What matters to you.” He knew from experience that there was no other defence against insanity; the Land's reality and its unreality could not be reconciled. “Give yourself a chance to find out who you are.”
“I know who I am.” Her jaw was stubborn. The lines of her nose seemed precise rather than fragile; her mouth was severe by habit. “I'm a doctor.” But she was facing something she did not know how to grasp. “I don't even have my bag.” She scrutinized her hands as if she wondered what they were good for. When she met his gaze, her question was a demand as well as an appeal. “What do you believe?”
“I believe”- he made no effort to muffle his hardness — “that we've got to find some way to stop Foul. That's more important than anything. He's trying to destroy the Land. I'm not going to let him get away with that. That's who I am.”
She stared at his affirmation. “Why? What does it have to do with you? If this is a dream, it doesn't matter. And if it's-” She had difficulty saying the words. “If it's real, it's not your problem. You can ignore it”
Covenant tasted old rage. “Foul laughs at lepers.”
At that, a glare of comprehension touched her eyes. Her scowl said plainly, Nobody has the right to laugh at illness.
In a tight voice, she asked, “What do we do now?”
“Now?” He was weak with fatigue; but her question galvanized him. She had reasons, strengths, possibilities. The old man had not risked her gratuitously. “Now,” he said grimly, "if I can hold off my vertigo, we get down from here, and go find out what kind of trouble we're in."
“Down?” She blinked at him. “I don't know how we got up.”
To answer her, he nodded toward the mountains. When she turned, she noticed the gap in the curve of the parapet facing the cliff. He watched as she crawled to the gap, saw what he already knew was there.
The parapet circled the tip of a long spire of stone which angled toward the cliff under the Watch. There were rude stairs cut into the upper surface of the shaft.
He joined her. One glance told him that his dizziness would not be easily overcome. Two hundred feet below him, the stairs vanished in the clouds like a fall into darkness.
Five: Thunder and Lightning
“I'LL go first.” Covenant was trembling deep in his bones. He did not look at Linden. “This stair joins the cliff-but if we fall, it's four thousand feet down. Fm no good at heights. If I slip, I don't want to take you with me.” Deliberately, he set himself at the gap, feet first so that he could back through it.
There he paused, tried to resist the vertigo which unmoored his mind by giving himself a VSE. But the exercise aroused a pang of leper's anxiety. Under the blue-tinged sun, his skin had a dim purple cast, as if his leprosy had already spread up his arms, affecting the pigmentation, killing the nerves.