Meanwhile, Hollian daughter of Amith, eh-Brand of Crystal Stonedown, is coming out of her initial stupor; wanting explanations for her unforseen rescue. While grateful and relieved by her unexpected reprieve, she is also worried about it's ramifications for her people. Sunder soothes her fears on that scale when he reports that he has killed Sivit's courser - and Covenant took care of the rukh. When asked how he came to travel in the company of the wielder of the White ring, instead of killing him on sight as the rede commands, Sunder is forced to admit his betrayal of his home, and the reasons for it:His condition galled her. She clung to him, searching among her ignorances and incapacities for some way to succor him. A voice in her insisted that if she could feel his distress so acutely she ought to be able to affect it somehow, that surely the current of perception which linked her to him could run both ways. But she shied away from the implications.
All her senses groaned to her that he suffered from a venom of the soul.
Hollian is doubtful, but willing to accept, contingently at least, the belief of her benefactors - until Linden tells her where they are headed."You are a Graveler," Hollian whispered in her surprise. "A Stonedownor like myself. Such a deed-surely it was difficult for you. How were you brought to commit such transgression?"
"Daughter of Amith," Sunder answered like a formal confession, "I was brought to it by the truth of the Rede. The words of the ur-Lord were words of beauty rather than evil. He spoke as one who owns both will and power to give his words substance. And in my heart the truth of the Rede was unbearable. "Also," he went on grimly, "I have been made to learn that the Rede itself contains falsehood."
Linden explains as well as she can through her immediate concern for Covenant:Hollian reacted in horror. "Revelstone? You betray me!" At once, she thrust away from the raft, flailing for an escape.
"That's where the answers are." As quickly as it had come, Linden's anger vanished, and a bone-deep dread took its place. She had been through too much. Without Sunder's aid, she could not have borne Covenant back to the raft. "Covenant thinks he can fight the Sunbane. But he has to understand it first. That's why he wants to talk to the Clave."
Linden seems to have found a few answers of her own in Crystal Stonedown. She in incensed when she learns that the Riders of the Clave shed no blood of their own. She emerges with the first absolute understanding she has felt since laying eyes on Joan for the first time; this shedding of innocent blood is terribly wrong, even if she can't bring herself to use the word "evil" yet - she's getting there. Her rage at the Clave is a healthy thing for her, enabling her to do more than just survive assault after assault on the percipience, giving her a purpose of her own; a definite benison for her.
GOOD!Echoes of the outrage which had determined her to rescue Hollian awoke in Linden. She welcomed them, explored them, hunting for courage. The rites of the Sunbane were barbaric enough as Sunder practiced them. To be able to achieve such power without personal cost seemed to her execrable. She did not know how to reconcile her ire with what she had heard of the Clave's purpose, its reputation for resistance to the Sunbane. But she was deeply suspicious of that reputation. She had begun to share Covenant's desire to reach Revelstone.
(Totally off the subject: how do the riders keep the blood from congealing inside their rukhs?)
But all these revelations mean little to the impending danger of Covenant's illness. Hollian may be able to help him....if he can last the night. But Linden knows there is no way: "He absolutely could not last till dawn." So she must do the one thing which she fears above all others. She must open herself completely to the rabid sickness inside him, try with her own life to steady his. This is the first appearance of a theme Linden will face again and again in this trilogy - letting the sickness all the way in in order to attempt to anneal it, allowing her self to be violated, like submitting to rape, that she may understand the poison and draw it out.
But, to get back to the point, Covenant is still dying.....
Just before dawn, the little company puts in to shore on a small sandbar, where Covenant can lie in the open, away from tall grasses that harbour millions of insects. Hurrying off in search of stone to shield them from the rising sun, Sunder and Hollian stumble across a very fortunate treasure: Voure, a bush that seems to be the Land's super-powered version of OFF. (And thank God for that! I don't think I could have stood the sun of Pestilence without Voure.)Her mother had begged to die; but he wanted to live. He had exchanged himself for Joan, had smiled as if the prospect were a benison; yet his every act showed that he wanted to live. Perhaps he was mad; perhaps his talk about a Despiser was paranoia rather than truth. But the conclusions he drew from it were ones she could not refute. She had learned in Crystal Stonedown that she shared them.
Now he was dying.
She had to help him. She was a doctor. Surely she could do something about his illness. Impossible that her strange acuity could not cut both ways. With an inward whimper, she abandoned resistance, bared her heart.
Slowly, she reached her awareness into him, inhabited his flesh with her private self. She felt his eviscerated respiration as her own, suffered the heat of his fever, clung to him more intimately than she had ever held to any man.
...
She squeezed l air into his lungs, pressured his pulse to continue, opposed the gnawing and spread of the ill.
Alone, she kept him alive through the remainder of the night.
Upon returning from their morning obeisances, Sunder sets out to look for Aliantha, while Hollian begins the attempt to succor Covenant. Fighting poison with poison, she draws upon the Sunbane for healing - and beats back the venom. With Sunder's Aliantha, and a few hours rest, all four of them are much restored when they set off down the Mithil once more.
When Covenant wakes, in the middle of the following night, he is lucid and fever-free, but has no memory of anything after being attacked by bees. "Who's the woman?" he asks, when Linden wakes and goes to him. I think I see the beginnings of a relationship that goes beyond what these two have had up until this point, at least on Linden's part:
Covenant is unable to believe that he used his ring without any kind of trigger in Crystal Stonedown. What set him off? He asks, were Linden or Sunder hurt? Linden answers, bitter and confused with jealousy:Her efforts to preserve his life had left her vulnerable to him. She had shared his extremity; and now he seemed to have a claim on her which she would never be able to refuse. Even her heartbeat belonged to him,
Yeah...she's in love with him..."I made you think Joan was in danger." He flinched; but she went on, struck at him with words. "It was the only thing I could find. You weren't going to save yourself-weren't going to save me. You kept accusing me of deserting you. By God," she grated, "I've stood by you since the first time I saw Joan. No matter how crazy you are, I've stood by you. You'd be dead now if it weren't for me. But you kept accusing me, and I couldn't reach you. The only name that meant anything to you was Joan."
She hurt him. His right hand made a gesture toward her, winced away. In the darkness, he seemed to have no eyes; his sockets gaped at her as if he had been blinded. She expected him to protest that he had often tried to help her, often striven to give her what support he could. But he stood there as he had stood when she had first confronted him on Haven Farm, upright under the weight of impossible burdens. When he spoke, his voice was edged with rage and exquisite grief.
"She was my wife. She divorced me because I had leprosy. Of all the things that happened to me, that was the worst. God knows I've committed crimes. I've raped-killed-betrayed- But those were things I did, and I did everything I could to make restitution. She treated me as if I were a crime. Just being who I was, just suffering from a physical affliction I couldn't have prevented or cured anymore than I could have prevented or cured ray own mortality, I terrified her. That was the -worst. Because I believed it. I felt that way about leprosy myself.
"It gave her a claim on me, I spent eleven years living with it-I couldn't bear being the cause. I sold my soul to pay that debt, and it doesn't make any difference." The muscles of his face contorted at the memory. "I'm a leper. I'm never going to stop being a leper. I'm never going to be able to quit her claim on me. It goes deeper than any choice." His words were the color of blood.
"But, Linden," he went on; and his direct appeal stung her heart. "She's my ex-wife." In spite of his efforts to control it, his voice carried fatality like a lament. "If the past is any indication, I'm never going to see her again."
She clung to him with her eyes. Uncertainties thronged in her. Why would he not see Joan again? How had he sold himself? How much had he withheld? But in her vulnerability one question mattered more than all the others. As steadily, noncommittally, as she could, she asked, "Do you want to see her again?"
To her tense ears, the simplicity of his reply bore the weight of a declaration. "No. I don't particularly like being a leper."
She turned away so that he would not see the tears in her eyes. She did not want to be so exposed to him. She was in danger of losing herself. And yet her relief was as poignant as love.
I love that conversation, being a sappy romantic.
The next morning, Hollian and Covenant actually meet for the first time. She questions him about his destination, and why he chooses to continue travelling on the river that is no longer going in quite the right direction. His answer is a thrill to my heart:
Andelain.
He wants to see Andelain.
Of course he does, and so do I.
Hollian is another matter however:
Oh what a flip flop my heart did the first time I read this! Surely not Andelain too! What's wrong with Andelain!!??"Do you -- " Hollian wrestled against her apprehension. "Do you choose to approach Andelain?"
"Yes." Covenant's resolution was complete. But he studied the eh-Brand closely, as if her concern disturbed him. "I want to see it. Before I go to Revelstone."
His assertion appalled her. She recoiled. Gasping, she strove to shout, but could not find enough air in all the wide morning. "You are mad. Or a servant of a-Jeroth, as the Rede proclaims." She turned toward Linden, then Sunder, beseeching them to hear her. "You must not permit it." She snatched a raw breath, cried out, "You must not!"
Covenant sprang at her, dug his fingers into her shoulders, shook her. "What's wrong with Andelain?"
NO!!!"It is a snare and a delusion!" she moaned. "An abomination in the Land. It lies lovely and cruel before the eyes, and seduces all who look upon it to their destruction. It is impervious to the Sunbane!"
....
"Covenant," she begged, "do not journey there. You will meet a doom more terrible than any unshielded Sunbane." Her every word vibrated with conviction, with honest fear. "Andelain is a desecration of the soul."
Covenant, bless him, refuses to believe.
My hero!!"Andelain." His voice was taut with fatality and rage. Without warning, he turned on her. His eyes blazed through her. "You say you've stood by me." His whisper expressed more bloodshed than any shout. "Do it now. Nothing else matters. Stand by me."
Before she could try to respond, he spun toward Sunder and Hollian. They stared at him, dumbfounded by his passion. The sun limned his profile like a cynosure. "Andelain used to be the heart of the Land." He sounded as if he were strangling. "I have to find out what happened to it." The next moment, he was in the water, swimming downriver with all his strength.
Hollian thinks Covenant out of his mind, or a servant of a-Jeroth, or both. Sunder, in an impassioned speech, reveals to the women the reason he follows Covenant, and the reason behind his growing resentment of Hollian. He feels that with her addition to the company, he is rendered superfluous. But even so, he is determined to see the reason for his world being turned upside-down.
Sunder is cool!"No other purpose remains to me. I must see the lies of the Rede answered. Throughout all the generations of the Sun-bane, the Riders have taken blood in the name of the Rede. Now they must be required to speak the truth."
He manages to convince Hollian to continue on with them, but she will not enter Andelain. Covenant is more relieved than he wants to show that his companions have chosen to follow him still. But Covenant and Linden both are unusually silent now; Covenant fixed on his concern for Andelain, Linden fixed on the ramifications of her concern for Covenant. A silent and trepidatious day in the river, and then...
Blessed relief! Andelain is unsullied. And the knot in my throat feels like joy...The demarcation between this region and the surrounding terrain was as clear as a line drawn in the dirt; at that border, the Sunbane ended and loveliness began. On the riverbank, like a marker and ward to the hills, stood an old oak, gnarled and somber, wearing long shrouds of bryony like a cloak of power-a hoary majesty untrammeled by desert or rot. It forbade and welcomed, according to the spirit of those who approached.
"Andelain," Covenant whispered thickly, as if he wanted to sing, and could not unclose his throat. "Oh, Andelain."
But what is Hollian so afraid of?
One last night the companions spend together, in the ruins across from Andelain. They spend the evening looking at the Health on the other side of the river, thinking their separate thoughts in silence. Covenant is anxious; Sunder distrustful; Hollian terrified and resolute; Linden overwhelmed, her sanity threatened by the siren call of Andelain.
In the morning Covenant prepares to go, and is astonished when Linden refuses to accompany him. Hollian flatly stated that nothing would drag her into those hills; Linden is a surprise to Covenant. He can't understand how she could not want to bathe in the health and beauty of Andelain after so much excoriation under the Sunbane. But Linden is adamant - she is too precariously balanced on the rim of madness - Andelain is a threat to her because of it's health. " I can't," she says miserably, "I'm afraid."
And so, in the poisoned emerald light of the rising sun, Thomas Covenant, leper, Unbeliever, venom infected White Gold Wielder, crosses alone into Andelain.
