Stephen Donaldson - The Wounded Land

She met his gaze miserably. Then her eyes closed. In a low voice, she said, “I must have been unconscious. I was dreaming about my parents.”

“You didn't hear anything? A voice making threats?” '

Her eyes snapped open in surprise. “No. Why would I?”

He bowed his head to hide his turmoil. Foul hadn't spoken to her? The implications both relieved and frightened him. Was she somehow independent of him? Free of his control? Or was he already that sure of her?

When Covenant looked up again, Linden's attention had slipped away to the parapet, the sun, the wide sky. Slowly, her face froze. She started to her feet. “ Where are we? ”

He caught her arms, held her sitting in front of him. “Look at me.” Her head winced from side to side in frantic denial. Exigencies thronged about him; questions were everywhere. But at this moment the stark need in her face dominated all other issues. “Dr. Avery.” There was insanity in the air; he knew that from experience. If he did not help her now, she might never be within reach of help again. “ Look at me.”

His demand brought her wild stare back to him.

“I can explain it. Just give me a chance.”

Her voice knifed at him. “Explain it.”

He flinched in shame; it was his fault that she was here-and that she was so unready. But he forced himself to face her squarely. “I couldn't tell you about it before.” The difficulty of what he had to say roughened his tone. “There was no way you could have believed it. And now it's so complicated-”

Her eyes clung to him like claws.

“There are two completely different explanations,” he said as evenly as he could. “Outside and inside. The outside explanation might be easier to accept. It goes like this.” He took a deep breath. “You and I are still lying in that triangle.” A grimace strained his bruises. “We're unconscious. And while we're unconscious, we're dreaming. We're sharing a dream.”

Her mien was tight with disbelief. He hastened to add, "It's not as farfetched as you think. Deep down in their minds-down where dreams come from-most people have a lot in common. That's why so many of our dreams fall into patterns that other people can recognize.

“It's happening to us.” He kept pouring words at her, not because he wanted to convince her, but because he knew she needed time, needed any answer, however improbable, to help her survive the first shock of her situation. “We're sharing a dream. And we're not the only ones,” he went on, denying her a chance to put her incredulity into words. “Joan had fragments of the same dream. And that old man-the one you saved. We're all tied into the same unconscious process.”

Her gaze wavered. He snapped, "Keep looking at me! I have to tell you what kind of dream it is. It's dangerous. It can hurt you. The things buried in us are powerful and violent, and they are going to come out. The darkness in us-the destructive side, the side we keep locked up all our lives-is alive here. Everybody has some self-hate inside. Here it's personified-externalized, the way things happen in dreams. He calls himself Lord Foul the Despiser, and he wants to destroy us.

“That's what Joan kept talking about. Lord Foul. And that's what the old man meant. 'However he may assail you. Be true.' Be true to yourself, don't serve the Despiser, don't let him destroy you. That's what we have to do.” He pleaded with her to accept the consequences of what he was saying, even if she chose not to believe the explanation itself. “We have to stay sane, hang onto ourselves, defend what we are and what we believe and what we want. Until it's over. Until we regain consciousness.”

He stopped, forced himself to give her time.

Her eyes dropped to his chest, as if that scar were a test of what he said. Shadows of fear passed across her countenance. Covenant felt suddenly sure that she was familiar with self-hate.

Tightly, she said, “This has happened to you before.”

He nodded.

She did not raise her head. “And you believe it?”

He wanted to say, Partially. If you put the two explanations together, they come close to what I believe. But in her present straits he could not trouble her with disclaimers. Instead, he got to his feet, drew her with him to look out from the Watch.

She stiffened against him in shock.

They were on a slab like a platform that appeared to hang suspended in the air. An expanse of sky as huge as if they were perched on a mountaintop covered them. The weird halo of the sun gave a disturbing hue to the roiling grey sea of clouds two hundred feet below them. The clouds thrashed like thunderheads, concealing the earth from horizon to horizon.

A spasm of vertigo wrenched Covenant; he remembered acutely that he was four thousand feet above the foothills. But he ignored the imminent reel and panic around him and concentrated on Linden.

She was stunned, rigid. This leap without transition from night' in the woods to morning on such an eminence staggered her. He wanted to put his arms around her, hide her face against his chest to protect her; but he knew he could not do so, could not give her the strength to bear things which once had almost shattered him. She had to achieve her own survival. Grimly, he turned her to look in the opposite direction.

The mountains rising dramatically there seemed to strike her a blow. They sprang upward out of the clouds a stone's throw from the Watch. Their peaks were rugged and dour. From the cliff behind the Watch, they withdrew on both sides like a wedge, piling higher into the distance. But off to the right a spur of the range marched back across the clouds before falling away again.

Linden gaped at the cliff as if it were about to fall on her. Covenant could feel her ribs straining; she was caught in the predicament of the mad and could not find enough air in all the open sky to enable her to cry out. Fearing that she might break away from him, lose herself over the parapet, he tugged her back down to the safety of the floor. She crumpled to her knees, gagging silently., Her eyes had a terrible glazed and empty look.

“Linden!” Because he did not know what else to do, he barked, “Haven't you even got the guts to go on living?”

She gasped, inhaled. Her eyes swept into focus on him like swords leaping from their scabbards. The odd sunlight gave her face an aspect of dark fury.

“I'm sorry,” he said thickly. Her reaction made him ache as badly as helplessness. “You were so-” Unwittingly, he had trespassed on something which he had no right to touch. “I never wanted this to happen to you.”

She rejected his regret with a violent shake of her head. “Now,” “ she panted, ”you're going to tell me the other explanation."

He nodded. Slowly, he released her, withdrew to sit with his back against the parapet. He did not understand her strange combination of strength and weakness; but at the moment his incomprehension was unimportant. “The inside explanation.”

A deep weariness ran through him. He fought it for the words he needed. “We're in a place called the Land. It's a different world-like being on a completely different planet. These mountains are the Southron Range, the southern edge. All the rest of the Land is west and north and east from us. This place is Kevin's Watch. Below us, and a bit to the west, there used to be a village called Mithil Stonedown. Revelstone is- ”But the thought of Revelstone recalled the Lords; he shied away from it. "I've been here before.

“Most of what I can tell you about it won't make much sense until you see it for yourself. But there's one thing that's important right now. The Land has an enemy. Lord Foul.” He studied her, trying to read her response. But her eyes brandished darkness at him, nothing else. “For thousands of years,” he went on, “Foul has been trying to destroy the Land. It's-sort of a prison for him. He wants to break out.” He groaned inwardly at the impossibility of making what he had to say acceptable to someone who had never had the experience. "He translated us out of our world. Brought us here. He wants us to serve him. He thinks he can manipulate us into helping him destroy the Land.