Pain shot through his hand; red bursts like exploding carbuncles staggered across his mind. But nothing happened. Vain did not even look at him. If the Demondim-spawn contained power, he held it at a depth Covenant could not reach.
“God damn it!” Covenant spat, clutching his damaged hand and shaking with useless ire. “Don't you understand? They're going to kill me!”
Vain did not move. His black features had already disappeared in the darkness.
“Damnation.” With an effort that made him want to weep, Covenant fought down his pointless urge to smash his hands against Vain. “Those ur-viles probably lied to Foamfollower. You're probably just going to stand there and watch them cut my throat.”
But sarcasm could not save him. His companions were in such peril because he had left them defenceless. And Foamfollower had been killed in the cataclysm of Covenant's struggle with the Illearth Stone. Foamfollower, who had done more to heal the Despiser's ill than any wild magic-killed because Covenant was too frail and extreme to find any other answer. He sank to the floor like a ruin overgrown with old guilt, and sat there dumbly repeating his last hope until exhaustion dragged him into slumber.
Twice he awakened, pulse hammering, heart aflame, from dreams of Linden wailing for him. After the second, he gave up sleep; he did not believe he could bear that nightmare a third time. Pacing around Vain, he kept vigil among his inadequacies until dawn.
Gradually, the eastern sky began to etiolate. The canyon walls detached themselves from the night, and were left behind like deposits of darkness. Covenant heard people moving outside the hut, and braced himself.
Feet came up the ladder; hands fumbled at the lashings.
When the vine dropped free, tie slammed his shoulder against the door, knocking the guard off the ladder. At once, he sprang to the ground, tried to flee.
But he had misjudged the height of the stilts. He landed awkwardly, plunged headlong into a knot of men beyond the foot of the ladder. Something struck the back of his head, triggering vertigo. He lost control of his limbs.
The men yanked him to his feet by the arms and hair. “You are fortunate the Graveller desires you wakeful,” one of them said. “Else I would teach your skull the hardness of my club.” Dizziness numbed Covenant's legs; the canyon seemed to suffer from nystagmus. The Woodhelvennin hauled him away like a collection of disarticulated bones.
They took him toward the north end of the canyon. Perhaps fifty or sixty paces beyond the last house, they stopped.
A vertical crack split the stone under his feet. Wedged into it was a heavy wooden post, nearly twice his height.
He groaned sickly and tried to resist. But he was helpless.
The men turned him so that he faced the village, then bound his arms behind the post. He made a feeble effort to kick at them; they promptly lashed his ankles as well.
When they were done, they left without a word.
As the vertigo faded, and his muscles began to recover, he gagged on nausea; but his guts were too empty to release anything.
The houses were virtually invisible, lost in the gloaming of the canyon. But after a moment he realized that the post had been placed with great care. A deep gap marked the eastern wall above him; and through it came a slash of dawn. He would be the first thing in Stonemight Woodhelven to receive the sun.
Moments passed. Sunlight descended like the blade of an axe toward his head.
Though he was protected by his boots, dread ached in his bones. His pulse seemed to beat behind his eyeballs.
The light touched his hair, his forehead, his face. While the Woodhelven lay in twilight, he experienced the sunrise like an annunciation. The sun wore a corona of light brown haze. A breath of arid heat blew across him.
Damnation, he muttered. Bloody damnation.
As the glare covered his mien, blinding him to the Woodhelven, a rain of sharp pebbles began to fall on him. Scores of people threw small stones at him.
He squeezed his eyes shut, bore the pain as best he could.
When the pebbles stopped, he looked up again and saw the Graveller approaching out of the darkness.
She held a long, iron knife, single-edged and hiltless. The black metal appeared baleful in her grasp. Her visage had not lost its misery; but it also wore a corrupt exaltation which he could not distinguish from madness.
Twenty paces or more behind the Graveller stood Vain, The Woodhelvennin had wrapped him in heavy vines, trying to restrain him; but he seemed unaware of his bonds. He held himself beyond reach as if he had come simply to watch Covenant die.
But Covenant had no time to think about Vain. The Graveller demanded his attention. “Now,” she rasped. “Recompense. I will shed your life, and your blood will raise water for the Woodhelven.” She glanced down at the narrow crevice, “And with your white ring we will buy back our Stonemight from the Clave.”
Clutching his dismally-rehearsed hope, Covenant asked, “Where's your orcrest?”
“Orcrest?” she returned suspiciously.
“Your Sunstone.”
“Ah,” she breathed, “Sunstone. The Rede speaks of such matters.” Bitterness twisted her face. “Sunstone is permitted-yet we were reft of our Stonemight. It is not just!” She eyed Covenant as if she were anticipating the taste of his blood. “I have no Sunstone, Halfhand.”
No Sunstone? Covenant gasped inwardly. He had hoped with that to ignite his ring. But the Graveller had no Sunstone. No Sunstone. The desert sun shone on him like the bright, hot flood which had borne him into the Land. Invisible vulture-wings beat about his head-heart strokes of insanity. He could barely thrust his voice through the noise. “How can-? I thought every Graveller needed a Sunstone.” He knew this was not true, but he wanted to make her talk, delay her. He had already been stabbed once: any similar blow would surely end him. “How else can you work the Sunbane?”
“It is arduous,” she admitted, though the hunger in her gaze did not blink. “I must make use of the Rede. The Rede!” Abruptly, she spat into the crack at her feet. “For generations Stonemight Woodhelven has had no need of such knowledge. From Graveller to Graveller the Stonemight has been handed down, and with it we made life! Without it, we must grope for survival as we may.”
The sun sent sweat trickling through Covenant's beard, down the middle of his back. His bonds cut off the circulation in his arms, tugged pain into his shoulders. He had to swallow several times to clear his throat. “What is it? The Stonemight?”
His question reached her. He saw at once that she could not refuse to talk about the Stonemight. A nausea of love or lust came into her face. She lowered her knife; her eyes lost their focus on him. “Stonemight,” she breathed ardently. “Ah, the Stonemight.” Her breasts tightened under her green robe as if she were remembering rapture. “It is power and glory, wealth and comfort. A stone of dearest emerald, alight with possibility and cold beyond the touch of any stone. That such might is contained in so small and lovely a periapt! For the Stonemight is no larger than my palm. It is flat, and sharp of edge, like a flake stricken from a larger stone. And it is admirable beyond price.”
She went on, unable to rein the rush of her entrancement. But Covenant lost her words in a flash of intuitive horror. Suddenly he was certain that the talisman she described was a fragment of the Illearth Stone.
That conviction blazed through him like appalled lightning. It explained so many things: the ruined condition of this region; the easiness of the Woodhelven's life; the gratuitous violence of the people; the Graveller's obsession. For the Illearth Stone was the very essence of corruption, a bane so malignant that he had been willing to sacrifice Foamfollower's life as well as his own in order to extirpate that evil from the Land. For a moment of dismay, he believed he had failed to destroy the Stone, that the Illearth Stone itself was the source of the Sunbane.