Soon the rims of the canyon closed above him, forming a tunnel. But the light behind him and the glow at the far end of the passage enabled him to keep up his pace. The loud reiteration of his boots deafened him to the sounds of pursuit.
When he cast a glance backward, he saw Vain there, matching his speed without effort.
After some distance, he reached sunlight in the dry riverbed of the Mithil. Panting raggedly, he halted, rested against the bank. As soon as he could muffle his respiration, he listened at the tunnel; but he heard nothing. Perhaps five corpses were enough to check the extremity of the Woodhelvennin. With rage fulminating in his heart, he swung on Vain.
“Listen to me,” he spat. “I don't care how bad it gets. If you ever do something like that again, I swear to God I'll take you back where I found you, and you and your whole bloody purpose can just rot!”
But the Demondim-spawn looked as blank as stone. He stood with his elbows slightly bent, his eyes unfocused, and betrayed no awareness of Covenant's existence.
“Sonofabitch,” Covenant muttered. Deliberately, he turned away from Vain. Gritting his will, he forced his anger into another channel, translated it into strength for what he had to do. Then he went to climb the north bank of the Mithil.
The sack of bread and the pouch of metheglin hampered him, making the ascent difficult; but when he gained the edge and stopped, he did not stop because he was tired. He was halted by the effect of the desert sun on the monstrous vegetation.
The River was dry. He had noticed that fact without pausing to consider it. But he considered it now. As far as he could see, grass as high as houses, shrubs the size of hillocks, forests of bracken, trees that pierced the sky-all had already been reduced to a necrotic grey sludge lying thigh-deep over every contour of the terrain.
The brown-clad sun melted every form of plant fiber, desiccated every drop of sap or juice, sublimated everything that grew. Every wood and green and fertile thing simply ran down itself like spilth, making one turgid puddle which the Sunbane sucked away as if the air were inhaling sludge. When he stepped into the muck in order to find out whether or not he could travel under these conditions, he was able to see the level of the viscid slop declining. It left a dead grey stain on his pants.
The muck sickened him. Involuntarily, he delayed. To clear his throat, he drank some of the metheglin, then chewed slowly at half a loaf of unleavened bread as he watched the sludge evaporate. But the pressure in him would not let him wait long. As the slop sank to the middle of his shins, he took a final swig of metheglin, stopped the pouch, and began slogging northwestward toward Revelstone, eleven score leagues distant.
The heat was tremendous. By mid-morning, the ground was bare and turning arid; the horizons had begun to shimmer, collapsing in on Covenant as if the desert sun shrank the world. Now there was nothing to hinder his progress across the waste of the Centre Plains-nothing except light as eviscerating as fire, and air which seemed to wrench the moisture from his flesh, and giddy heatwaves, and Sunbane.
He locked his face toward Revelstone, marched as if neither sun nor wilderland had the power to daunt him. But dust and dryness clogged his throat. By noon, he had emptied half his leather pouch. His shirt was dark with sweat. His forehead felt blistered, flushed by chills. The haze affected his balance, so that he stumbled even while his legs were still strong enough to be steady. And his strength did not last; the sun leeched it from him, despite his improvident consumption of bread and metheglin.
For a time, indecision clouded his mind. His only hope of gaining on Linden lay in travelling day and night without letup. If he acted rationally, journeyed only at night while the desert sun lasted, then the Rider's Courser would increase the distance between them every day. But he could not endure this pace. The hammer of the Sunbane was beating his endurance thinner and thinner; at confused moments, he felt translucent already.
When his brain became so giddy that he found himself wondering if he could ask Vain to carry him, he acknowledged his limitations. In a flinch of lucidity, he saw himself clinging to Vain's shoulders while the Demondim-spawn stood motionless under the sun because Covenant was not moving. Bitterly, he turned northeast toward Andelain.
He knew that the marge of Andelain ran roughly parallel to his direct path toward Revelstone; so in the Hills he would be able to stay near the route the Rider must have taken. Yet Andelain was enough out of his way to gall him. From the Hills he might not be able to catch sight of Linden and her companions, even if by some piece of good fortune the Rider was delayed; and the rumpled terrain of Andelain might slow him. But the choice was not one of speed: not under this sun. In Andelain he might at least reach the Soulsease River alive.
And perhaps, he thought, trying to encourage himself, perhaps even a Rider of the Clave could not travel swiftly through the various avatars of the Sunbane. Clenching that idea in his sore throat, he angled in the direction of the Hills.
With Vain striding impassively behind him, he crossed into lushness shortly before dusk. In his bitterness, he did not rejoice to be back within the Land's last bastion of health and Law; but the spring of the turf and the vitality of the aliantha affected him like rejoicing. Strength flowed back into his veins; his sight cleared; his raw mouth and throat began to heal. Through the gold-orange emblazonry of the sunset, he stiffened his pace and headed grimly along the skirts of the Hills.
All that night, he did not stop for more than scant moments at a time. Sustained by Andelain, his body bore the merciless demand of his will. The moon was too new to give him aid; but few trees grew along the edges of the Hills and, under an open sky, star-glister sufficed to light his way. Drinking metheglin and chewing bread for energy, he stalked the hillsides and the vales. When his pouch was empty, he discarded it. And at all times his gaze was turned westward, searching the Plains for any sign of a fire which might indicate, beyond hope or chance, that the Rider and his prisoners were still within reach. By dawn, he was twenty leagues from Stonemight Woodhelven, and still marching, as if by sheer stubbornness he had abrogated his mortality.
But he could not make himself immune to exhaustion. In spite of aliantha and clear spring water, bounteous grass and air as vital as an elixir, his exertions eroded him like leprosy. He had passed his limits, and travelled now on borrowed endurance-stamina wrested by plain intransigence from the ruinous usury of time. Eventually, he came to believe that the end was near, waiting to ambush him at the crest of every rise, at the bottom of every slope. Then his heart rose up in him and, because he was Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, responsible beyond any exculpation for the outcome of his life, he began to run.
Staggering, stumbling at every third stride, he lumbered northwest, always northwest, within the marge of Andelain, and did not count the cost. Only one concession did he make to his wracked breathing and torn muscles: he ate treasure-berries from every aliantha he passed, and threw the seeds out into the wasteland. Throughout the day he ran, though by mid-afternoon his pace was no better than a walk; and throughout the day Vain followed, matching stride for stride with his own invulnerability the exhaustion which crumbled Covenant.
Shortly after dark, Covenant broke. He missed his footing, fell, and could not rise. His lungs shuddered for air, but he was not aware of them. Everything in his chest seemed numb, beyond help. He lay stunned until his pulse slowed to a limp and his lungs stopped shivering. Then he slept.