He nodded. He had forgotten the Graveller.
But when he and Linden turned to retrace their way, they saw a figure coming darkly through the shimmer.
He stopped, squinted. Mirage? Linden stood near him as if to prevent him from losing his balance. They waited.
The figure approached until they recognized Sunder.
He halted twenty paces from them.
In his right hand, he gripped his poniard. This time, he seemed perfectly familiar with its use.
Covenant watched the Graveller dumbly, as if the knife had made them strangers to each other. Linden's hand touched a warning to his arm.
“Thomas Covenant.” Sunder's face looked like hot stone. “What is my name?”
What-? Covenant frowned at the intervening heat.
“Speak my name!” the Graveller spat fiercely. “Do not compel me to slay you.”
Slay? Covenant made an effort to reach through the confusion.
“Sunder,” he croaked. "Graveller of Mithil Stonedown. Holder of the Sunstone."
Incomprehension stretched Sunder's countenance. “Linden Avery?” he asked falteringly. “What is the name of my father?”
“Was,” she said in a flat tone. “His name was Nassic son of Jous. He's dead.”
Sunder gaped as if Covenant and Linden were miraculous. Then he dropped his hands to his sides. “Heaven and Earth! It is not possible. The Sunbane-Never have I beheld-” He shook his head in astonishment, “Ah, you are a mystery! How can such things be? Does one white ring alter the order of life?”
“Sometimes,” Covenant muttered. He was trying to follow a fractured sequence of memories. Everything he did was an unintentional assault on the Graveller's preconceptions. He wanted to ease Sunder with some kind of explanation. The heat haze seemed to blur the distinction between past and present. Something about his boots-? He forced words past his parched lips. “The first time I was here-” Boots-yes, that was it. Drool Rockworm had been able to locate him through the alien touch of his boots on the ground. “My boots. Her shoes. They don't come from the Land. Maybe that's what protected us.”
Sunder grabbed at the suggestion as if it were a benison. “Yes. It must be so. Flesh is flesh, susceptible to the Sunbane. But your footwear-it is unlike any I have seen. Surely you were shielded at the sun's first touch, else you would have been altered beyond any power to know me.” Then his face darkened, “But could you not have told me? I feared-” The clenching of his jaws described eloquently the extremity of his fear.
“We didn't know.” Covenant wanted to lie down, close his eyes, forget. “We were lucky.” A moment passed before he found the will to ask, “Marid-?”
At once, Sunder put everything else aside. He went to look at the stakes, the holes. A frown knotted his forehead. “Fools,” he grated. “I warned them to ware such things. None can foretell the Sunbane. Now there is evil upon the Plains.”
“You mean,” asked Linden, “he didn't escape? He isn't safe?”
In response, the Graveller rasped, “Did I not say there was not time? You have achieved nothing but your own prostration. It is enough,” he went on stiffly. “I have followed you to this useless end. Now you will accompany me.”
Linden stared at Sunder. “Where are we going?”
“To find shelter,” he said in a calmer tone. “We cannot endure this sun.”
Covenant gestured eastward, toward a region with which he was familiar. “The hills-”
Sunder shook his head. “There is shelter in the hills. But to gain it we must pass within scope of Windshorn Stonedown. That is certain sacrifice-for any stranger, as for the Graveller of Mithil Stonedown. We go west, to the Mithil River.”
Covenant could not argue. Ignorance crippled his ability to make decisions. When Sunder took his arm and turned him away from the sun, he began to scuffle stiffly out of the bowl of dust.
Linden moved at his side. Her stride was unsteady; she seemed dangerously weak. Sunder was stronger; but his eyes were bleak, as if he could see disaster ahead. And Covenant could barely lift his feet. The sun, still climbing toward mid-morning, clung to his shoulders, hagriding him. Heat flushed back and forth across his skin-a vitiating fever which echoed the haze of the scorched earth. His eyes felt raw from the scraping of his eyelids. After a time, he began to stumble as if the ligatures of his knees were parting.
Then he was in the dirt, with no idea of how he had fallen. Sunder supported him so that he could sit up. The Graveller's face was grey with dust; he, too, had begun to suffer. “Thomas Covenant,” he panted, “this is fatal to you. You must have water. Will you not make use of your white ring?”
Covenant's respiration was shallow and ragged. He stared into the haze as if he had gone blind.
“The white ring,” Sunder pleaded. “You must raise water, lest, you die.”
Water. He pulled the shards of himself together around that thought. Impossible. He could not concentrate. Had never used wild magic for anything except contention. It was not a panacea.
Both Sunder and Linden were studying him as if he were responsible for their hopes. They were failing along with him. For their sakes, he would have been willing to make the attempt. But it was impossible for other reasons as well. Tortuously, as if he had been disjointed, he shifted forward, got his knees under him, then his feet.
“Ur-Lord!” protested the Graveller.
“I don't,” Covenant muttered, hall coughing, “don't know how.” He wanted to shout. “I'm a leper. I can't see-can't feel- ” The Earth was closed to him; it lay blank and meaningless under his feet-a concatenation of haze, nothing more. “I don't know how to reach it.” We need Earthpower. And a Lord to wield it.
There's no Earthpower. The Lords are gone. He had no words potent enough to convey his helplessness. “I just can't.”
Sunder groaned. But he hesitated only momentarily. Then he sighed in resignation, “Very well. Yet we must have water.” He took out his knife. “My strength is greater than yours. Perhaps I am able to spare a little blood.” Grimly, he directed the blade toward the mapwork of scars on his left forearm.
Covenant lurched to try to stop him.
Linden was quicker. She seized Sunder's wrist. “No!”;
The Graveller twisted free of her, gritted acutely, “We have water.”
“Not like that.” The cuts on Nassic's hand burned in Covenant's memory; he rejected such power instinctively.
“Do you wish to die?”
“No.” Covenant upheld himself by force of will. “But I'm not that desperate. Not yet, anyway.”
“Your knife isn't even clean,” added Linden. “If septicemia set in, I'd have to burn it out.”
Sunder closed his eyes as if to shut out what they were saying.: “I will outlive you both under this sun.” His jaws chewed his voice into a barren whisper. “Ah, my father, what have you done1; to me? Is this the outcome of all your mad devoir?”
“Suit yourself,” Covenant said brutally, trying to keep Sunder from despair or rebellion. “But at least have the decency to wait until we're too weak to stop you.”
The Graveller's eyes burst open. He spat a curse. “Decency, is it?” he grated. “You are swift to cast shame upon people whose lives you do not comprehend. Well, let us hasten the moment when I may decently save you.” With a thrust of his arm, he pushed Covenant into motion, then caught him around the waist to keep him from falling, and began half dragging him westward.
In a moment, Linden came to Covenant's other side, shrugged his arm over her shoulders so that she could help support him. Braced in that fashion, he was able to travel.