Covenant stared blindly at his food without tasting it. He seemed to have no reason to bother feeding himself. Yet he knew that was not true; in fact, he was foundering in reasons. But the impossibility of doing justice to them all made his resolution falter. Had he really sold his soul to the Despiser-?
But he was a leper; he had spent long years learning the answer to his helplessness. Leprosy was incurable. Therefore lepers disciplined themselves to pay meticulous attention to their immediate needs. They ignored the abstract immensity of their burdens, concentrated instead on the present, moment by moment. He clung to that pragmatic wisdom. He had no other answer.
Numbly, he put a piece of fruit in his mouth, began to chew.
After that, habit and hunger came to his aid. Perhaps his answer was not a good one; but it defined him, and he stood by it.
Stood or fell, he did not know which.
Nassic waited humbly, solicitously, while Covenant and Linden ate; but as soon as they finished, he said, “Ur-Lord.” He sounded eager. “I am your servant. It is the purpose in my life to serve you, as it was the purpose of Jous my father and Prassan his father throughout the long line of the Unfettered.” He seemed unmindful of the quaver in his words. “You are not come too soon. The Sunbane multiplies in the Land. What will you do?”
Covenant sighed. He felt unready to deal with such questions. But the ritual of eating had steadied him. And both Nassic and Linden deserved some kind of reply. Slowly, he said, “We'll have to go to Revelstone-” He spoke the name hesitantly. Would Nassic recognize it? If there were no more Lords — Perhaps Revelstone no longer existed. Or perhaps all the names had changed. Enough time had passed for anything to happen.
But Nassic crowed immediately, “Yes! Vengeance upon the Clave! It is good!”
The Clave? Covenant wondered. But he did not ask. Instead, he tested another familiar name. “But first we'll have to go to Mithil Stonedown-”
“No!” the man interrupted. His vehemence turned at once into protest and trepidation. “You must not. They are wicked-wicked! Worshippers of the Sunbane. They say that they abhor the Clave, but they do not. Their fields are sown with blood!”
Blood again; Sunbane; the Clave. Too many things he did not know. He concentrated on what he was trying to ascertain. Apparently, the names he remembered were known to Nassic in spite of their age. That ended his one dim hope concerning the fate of the Earthpower. A new surge of futility beat at him. How could he possibly fight Lord Foul if there were no Earthpower? No, worse-if there were no Earthpower, what was left to fight for?
But Nassic's distraught stare and Linden's clenched, arduous silence demanded responses. Grimacing, he thrust down his sense of futility. He was intimately acquainted with hopelessness, impossibility, gall; he knew how to limit their power over him.
He took a deep breath and said, “There's no other way. We can't get out of here without going through Mithil Stonedown.”
“Ah, true,” the old man groaned. “That is true.” He seemed almost desperate. "Yet you must not-They are wicked! They harken to the words of the Clave-words of abomination. They mock all old promises, saying that the Unbeliever is a madness in the minds of the Unfettered. You must not go there."
“Then how-?” Covenant frowned grimly. What's happened to them? I used to have friends there.
Abruptly, Nassic reached a decision. “I will go. To my son. His name is Sunder. He is wicked, like the rest. But he is my son. He comes to me when the mood is upon him, and I speak to him, telling him what is proper to his calling. He is not altogether corrupted. He will aid us to pass by the Stonedown. Yes.” At once, he threw himself toward the entryway.
“Wait!” Covenant jumped to his feet. Linden joined him.
“I must go!” cried Nassic urgently.
“Wait until the rain stops.” Covenant pleaded against the frenzy in Nassic's eyes. The man looked too decrepit to endure any more exposure. “We're not in that much of a hurry.”
“It will not halt until nightfall. I must make haste!”
“Then at least take a torch!”
Nassic flinched as if he had been scourged. “Ah, you shame me! I know the path. I must redeem my doubt.” Before Covenant or Linden could stop him, he ran out into the rain.
Linden started after nun; but Covenant stayed her. Lightning blazed overhead. In the glare, they saw Nassic stumbling frenetically toward the end of the dell. Then thunder and blackness hit, and he disappeared as if he had been snuffed out. “Let him go,” sighed Covenant. “H we chase him, we'll probably fall off a cliff somewhere.” He held her until she nodded. Then he returned wearily to the fire.
She followed him. When he placed his back to the hearth, she confronted him. The dampness of her hair darkened her face, intensifying the lines between her brows, on either side of her mouth. He expected anger, protest, some outburst against the insanity of her situation. But when she spoke, her voice was flat, controlled.
“This isn't what you expected.”
“No.” He cursed himself because he could not rise above his dismay. “No. Something terrible has happened,”
She did not waver. “How can that be? You said the last time you were here was ten years ago. What can happen in ten years?”
Her query reminded him that he had not yet told her about Lord Foul's prophecy. But now was not the time: she was suffering from too many other incomprehensions. “Ten years in our world.” For her sake, he did not say, the real world. “Time is different here. It's faster-the way dreams are almost instantaneous sometimes. I've-” He had difficulty meeting her stare; even his knowledge felt like shame. “I've actually been here three times before. Each time, I was unconscious for a few hours, and months went by here. So ten years for me-Oh, bloody hell!” The Despiser had said, For a score of centuries. For nearly as many centuries more, “If the ratio stays the same, we're talking about three or four thousand years.”
She accepted this as if it were just one more detail that defied rationality. “Well, what could have happened? What's so important about hurtloam?”
He wanted to hide his head, conceal his pain; he felt too much exposed to the new penetration of her senses. “Hurtloam was a special mud that could heal-almost anything.” Twice, while in the Land, it had cured his leprosy. But he shied away from the whole subject of healing. If he told her what hurtloam had done for him in the past, he would also have to explain why it had not done him any lasting good. He would have to tell her that the Land was physically self-contained- that it had no tangible connection to their world. The healing of his chest meant nothing. When they regained consciousness, she would find that their bodily continuity in their world was complete. Everything would be the same.
If they did not awaken soon, she would not have time to treat his wound.
Because she was already under so much stress, he spared her that knowledge. Yet he could not contain his bitterness. “But that's not the point. Look.” He pointed at the hearth. "Smoke. Ashes. The people I knew never built fires that destroyed wood. They didn't have to. For them, everything around them-wood, water, stone, flesh-every part of the physical world-was full of what they called Earthpower. The power of life. They could raise fire-or make boats flow upstream-or send messages-by using the Earthpower in wood instead of the wood itself.
“That was what made them who they were. The Earthpower was the essence of the Land.” Memories thronged in him, visions of the Lords, of the masters of stone-and wood-lore. "It was so vital to them, so sustaining, that they gave their lives to it. Did everything they could to serve it, rather than exploit it. It was strength, sentience, passion. Life. A fire like this would have horrified them."