“Oh, that.” Her grin was half grimness, half amusement. “The med school I went to was in a pretty rough neighbourhood. The security guards gave self-defence lessons.”
Covenant found himself wondering how long it had been since a woman had last smiled at him. Before he could reply, she glanced upward. “We ought to get out of the sun. One treasure-berry apiece isn't going to keep us going very long.”
“True.” The aliantha had blunted his hunger, eased his body's yearning for water, restored a measure of life to his muscles. But it could not make him impervious to the sun. Around him, the Plains swam with heat as if the fabric of the ground were being bleached away fiber by fiber. He rubbed absent-mindedly at the blood on his chin, started toward Sunder.
Linden halted him. “Covenant.”
He turned. She stood facing eastward, back over the shelf of rock. Both hands shaded her eyes.
“Something's coming.”
Sunder joined them; together, they squinted into the haze. “What the hell-?” Covenant muttered.
At first he saw nothing but heat and pale dirt. But then he glimpsed an erect figure, shimmering darkly in and out of sight.
The figure grew steadier as it approached. Slowly, it became solid, transubstantiating itself like an avatar of the Sunbane. It was a man. He wore the apparel of a Stonedownor.
“Who-?”
“Oh, my God!” Linden gasped.
The man came closer.
Sunder spat, “Marid!”
Marid? An abrupt weakness struck Covenant's knees.
The Sunbane will have no mercy-
The man had Marid's eyes, chancrous with self-loathing, mute supplication, lust. He still wore stakes tied to each of his ankles. His gait was a shambling of eagerness and dread.
He was a monster. Scales covered the lower half of his face; both mouth and nose were gone. And his arms were snakes. Thick scale-clad bodies writhed from his shoulders; serpent-heads gaped where his hands had been, brandishing fangs as white as bone. His chest heaved for air, and the snakes hissed.
Hellfire.
Linden stared at Marid. Nausea distorted her mouth. She was paralyzed, hardly breathing. The sight of Marid's inflicted ill reft her of thought, courage, motion.
“Ah, Marid, my friend,” Sunder whispered miserably. “This is the retribution of the Sunbane, which none can foretell. If you were innocent, as the ur-Lord insists-” He groaned in grief. “Forgive me.”
But an instant later his voice hardened. “Avaunt, Marid!” he barked. “Ware us! Your life is forfeit here!”
Marid's gaze flinched as if he understood; but he continued to advance, moving purposefully toward the shelf of rock.
“Marid!” Sunder snatched out his poniard. “I have guilt enough in your doom. Do not thrust this upon me.”
Marid's eyes shouted a voiceless warning at the Graveller.
Covenant's throat felt like sand; his lungs laboured. In the back of his mind, a pulse of outrage beat like lifeblood.
Three steps to his side, Linden stood frozen and appalled.
Hissing voraciously, Marid flung himself into a run. He sprinted to the rock, up the shelf.
For one splinter of time, Covenant could not move. He saw Marid launch himself at Linden, saw fangs reaching toward her face, saw her standing as if her heart had stopped.
Her need snatched Covenant into motion. He took two desperate strides, crashed head and shoulders against her. They tumbled together across the hard dirt.
He disentangled himself, flipped to his feet.
Marid landed heavily, rolling to get his legs under him.
Wielding his knife, Sunder attempted to close with Marid. But a flurry of fangs drove him back.
At once, Marid rushed toward Linden again.
Covenant met the charge. He stopped one serpent head with his right forearm, caught the other scaly body in his left fist.
The free snake reared back to strike.
In that instant, Sunder reached into the struggle. Too swiftly for the snakes to react, he cut Marid's throat. Viscid fluid splashed the front of Covenant's clothes.
Sunder dropped his dead friend. Blood poured into the dirt. Covenant recoiled several steps. As she rose to her knees, Linden gagged as if she were being asphyxiated by the Sunbane.
The Graveller paid no heed to his companions. A frenetic haste possessed him. “Blood,” he panted. “Life.” He slapped his hands into the spreading pool, rubbed them together, smeared red onto his forehead and cheeks. “At least your death will be of some avail. It is my guilt-gift.”
Covenant stared in dismay. He had not known that a human body could be so lavish of blood.
Snatching out the Sunstone, Sunder bent his head to Marid's neck, sucked blood directly from the cut. With the stone held in both palms, he spewed fluid onto it so that it lay cupped in Marid's rife. Then he looked upward and began to chant in a language Covenant could not understand.
Around him, the air concentrated as if the heat took personal notice of his invocation. Energy blossomed from the orcrest.
A shaft of vermeil as straight as the line between life and death shot toward the sun. It crackled like a discharge of lightning; but it was steady and palpable, sustained by blood.
It consumed the blood in Sunder's hands, drank the blood from Marid's veins, leeched the blood from the earth. Soon every trace of red was gone. Marid's throat gaped like a dry grin.
Still chanting, Sunder set down the Sunstone near Marid's head. The shaft binding the orcrest to the sun did not falter.
Almost at once, water bubbled up around the stone. It gathered force until it was a small spring, as fresh and clear as if it arose from mountain rock rather than from barren dust.
As he watched, Covenant's head began to throb. He was flushed and sweating under the weight of the sun.
Still Sunder chanted; and beside the spring, a green shoot raised its head. It grew with staggering celerity; it became a vine, spread itself along the ground, put out leaves. In a moment, it produced several buds which swelled like melons.
The Graveller gestured Linden toward the spring. Her expression had changed from suffocation to astonishment. Moving as if she were entranced, she knelt beside the spring, put her lips into the water. She jerked back at once, surprised by the water's coldness. Then she was drinking deeply, greedily.
A maleficent fire bloomed in Covenant's right forearm. His breathing was ragged. Dust filled his mouth. He could feel his pulse beating in the base of his throat.
After a time, Linden pulled away from the spring, turned to him. “It's good,” she said in dim wonder. “It's good.”
He did not move, did not look at her. Dread spurted up in him like water from dry ground.
“Come on,” she urged. “Drink.”
He could not stop staring at Marid. Without shifting his gaze, he extended his right arm toward her.
She glanced at it, then gave a sharp cry and leaped to him, took hold of his arm to look at it closely.
He was loath to see what she saw; but he forced himself to gaze downward.
His forearm was livid. A short way up from his wrist, two puncture marks glared bright red against the darkness of the swelling. “Bastard bit me,” he coughed as if he were already dying.
Eight: The Corruption of the Sun
“SUNDER!” Linden barked. “Give me your knife,”
The Graveller had faltered when he saw the fang marks; and the spring had also faltered. But he recovered quickly, restored the cadence of his chant. The shaft of Sunbane-fire wavered, then grew stable once more. The melons continued to ripen.