Quietly, Sunder replied, “That is well.”
Covenant nodded. Soon he closed his eyes. His weariness lowered him to the ground beside the fire. He wanted to sleep.
But Linden held his attention. “It isn't enough,” she said stiffly. “You keep saying you want to fight the Sunbane, but you can hardly light a fire. You might as well be afraid of rubbing sticks together. I need a better answer than that”
He understood her point. Surely the Sunbane-capable of torturing nature itself at its whim-could not be abrogated by anything as paltry as a white gold ring. He distrusted power because no power was ever enough to accomplish his heart's desires. To heal the world. Cure leprosy. Bridge the loneliness which thwarted his capacity for love. He made an effort not to sound harsh. “Then find one. Nobody else can do it for you.”
She did not respond. His words seemed to drive her back into her isolation. But he was too tired to contend with her. Already he had begun to fade. As she settled herself for the night, he rode the susurration of the River into sleep.
He awoke cramped and chilled beside a pile of dead embers. The stars had been effaced; and in the dawn, the rapid Mithil looked dark and cold, as fatal as sleet He did not believe he could survive another day in the water.
But, as Sunder had said, they had no choice. Shivering in dire anticipation, he awakened his companions. Linden looked pale and haggard, and her eyes avoided the River as if she could not bear to think about it. Together, they ate a scant breakfast, then stood on a boulder to face the dawn. As they had expected, the sun rose in a glow of blue, and menacing clouds began to pile out of the east. Sunder shrugged in resignation and went to retie his shrinking sack of melons to the raft
The companions launched the bundle of wood. The sting of the water burned Covenant's breath out of his lungs; but he fought the cold and the current and the weight of his boots with his old leper's intransigence, and survived the first shock.
Then the rain commenced. During the night, the River had become less violent; it had washed itself free of floating brush and trees and had risen above the worst of its turbulence. But the rain was more severe, had more wind behind it. Gusts drove the raindrops until they hit like flurries of hail. Torrents lashed into the water with a hot, scorching sound.
The downpour rapidly became torment for the companions. They could not escape from the sodden and insidious cold. From time to time, Covenant glimpsed a burst of lightning in the distance, rupturing the dark; but the unremitting slash of rain into the Mithil drowned out any thunder. Soon his muscles grew so leaden, his nerves so numb, that he could no longer grip the raft. He jammed his hand in among the branches, hooked his elbow over one of the bindings, and survived.
Somehow, the day passed. At last, a line of clear sky broke open along the east. Gradually, the rain and wind eased. More by chance than intent, the companions gained a small cove of gravel and sand in the west bank. As they drew their raft out of the water, Covenant's legs failed, and he collapsed face-down on the pebbles as if he would never be able to move again.
Linden panted, “Firewood.” He could hear the stumbling scrunch of her shoes. Sunder also seemed to be moving.
Her groan jerked up his head, heaved him to his hands and knees. Following her wounded stare, he saw what had dismayed her.
There was no firewood. The rain had washed the gravel clean. And the small patch of shore was impenetrably surrounded by a tangle of briar with long barbed thorns. Exhaustion and tears thickened her voice as she moaned, “What are we going to do?”
Covenant tried to speak, but was too weak to make any sound.
The Graveller locked his weary knees, mustered a scant smile. “The ur-Lord has granted permission. Be of good heart. Some little warmth will ease us greatly.”
Lurching to his feet, Covenant watched blankly as Sunder approached the thickest part of the briar.
The muscles of his jaw knotted and released irrhythmically, like a faltering heartbeat. But he did not hesitate. Reaching his left hand in among the thorns, he pressed his forearm against one of the barbs and tore a cut across his skin.
Covenant was too stunned by fatigue and cold and responsibility to react. Linden flinched, but did not move.
With a shudder, Sunder smeared the welling blood onto his hands and face, then took out his orcrest. Holding the Sunstone so that his cut dripped over it, he began to chant.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Covenant trembled in his bones, thinking that without sunlight Sunder would not be able to succeed. But suddenly a red glow awakened in the translucent stone. Power the colour of Sunder's blood shafted in the direction of the sun.
The sun had already set behind a line of hills, but the Sunstone was unaffected by the intervening terrain; Sunder's vermeil shaft struck toward the sun's hidden position. Some distance from the cove, the shaft disappeared into the dark base of the hills; but its straight, bright power was not hindered.
Still chanting, Sunder moved his hands so that the shaft encountered a thick briar stem. Almost at once, flame burst from the wood.
When the stem was well afire, he shifted his power to the nearest branches.
The briar was wet and alive; but his shaft lit new stems and twigs easily, and the tangle was so dense that the flames fed each other. Soon he had created a self-sustaining bonfire.
He fell silent; and the blood-beam vanished. Tottering weakly, he went to the River to wash himself and the Sunstone.
Covenant and Linden hunched close to the blaze. Twilight was deepening around them. At their backs, the Mithil sounded like the respiration of the sea. In the firelight, Covenant could see that her lips were blue with cold, her face drained of blood. Her eyes reflected the flames as if they were devoid of any other vision. Grimly, he hoped that she would find somewhere the desire or the resolution to endure.
Shortly, Sunder returned, carrying his sack of ussusimiel. Linden bestirred herself to tend his arm; but he declined quietly. “I am a Graveller,” he murmured. “Such work would not have fallen to me, were I slow of healing.” He raised his forearm, showed her that the bleeding had already stopped. Then he sat down near the flames, and began to prepare a ration of melons for supper.
The three of them ate in silence, settled themselves for the night in silence. Covenant was seeking within himself for the courage to face another day under the sun of rain. He guessed that his companions were doing the same. They wore their private needs like cerements, and slept in isolation.
The next day surpassed Covenant's worst expectations. As clouds sealed the Plains, the wind mounted to rabid proportions, Whipping the River into froth and flailing rain like the barbs of a scourge. Lightning and thunder bludgeoned each other across the heavens. In flashes, the sky became as lurid as the crumbling of a firmament, as loud as an avalanche. The raft rode the current like dead wood, entirely at the mercy of the Mithil.
Covenant thrashed and clung in constant fear of the lightning, expecting it to strike the raft, to fry him and his companions. But that killing blow never fell. Late in the day, the lightning itself granted them an unexpected reprieve. Downriver from them, a blue-white bolt sizzled into a stand of prodigious eucalyptus. One of the trees burned like a torch.
Sunder yelled at his companions. Together, they heaved the raft toward the bank, then left the River and hastened to the trees. They could not approach the burning eucalyptus; but when a blazing branch fell nearby, they used other dead wood to drag the branch out from under the danger of the tree. Then they fed brush, broken tree limbs, eucalyptus leaves as big as scythes, to the flames until the blaze was hot enough to resist the rain.