The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson

he could summon me here.” What I don’t understand, he sighed, is why he had to do it that way. It wasn’t like that before. “Maybe it’s an accident that you’re here, too. But I don’t think so.”
    Linden glanced down at the stone as if to verify that it was substantial, then touched the bruise behind her ear. Frowning, she shifted into a sitting position. Now she did not look at him. “I don’t understand,” she said stiffly. “First you tell me this is a dream—then you say it’s real. First you’re dying back there in the woods—then you’re healed by some kind of—some kind of magic. First Lord Foul is a figment—then he’s real.” In spite of her control, her voice trembled slightly. “Which is it? You can’t have it both ways.” Her fist clenched. “You could be dying.”
    Ah, I have to have it both ways, Covenant murmured. It’s like vertigo. The answer is in the contradiction—in the eye of the paradox. But he did not utter his thought aloud.
    Yet Linden’s question relieved him. Already her restless mind—that need which had rejected his efforts to warn her, had driven her to follow him to his doom—was beginning to grapple with her situation. If she had the strength to challenge him, then her crisis was past, at least for the moment. He found himself smiling in spite of his fear.
    “It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “Maybe this is real—maybe it isn’t. You can believe whatever you want. I’m just offering you a frame of reference, so you’ll have some place to start.”
    Her hands kept moving, touching herself, the stone, as if she needed tactile sensation to assure her of her own existence. After a moment, she said, “You’ve been here before.” Her anger had turned to pain. “It’s your life. Tell me how to understand.”
    “Face it,” he said without hesitation. “Go forward. Find out what happens—what’s at stake. What matters to you.” He knew from experience that there was no other defense against insanity; the Land’s reality and its unreality could not be reconciled. “Give yourself a chance to find out who you are.”
    “I know who I am.” Her jaw was stubborn. The lines of her nose seemed precise rather than fragile; her mouth was severe by habit. “I’m a doctor.” But she was facing something she did not know how to grasp. “I don’t even have my bag.” She scrutinized her hands as if she wondered what they were good for. When she met his gaze, her question was a demand as well as an appeal. “What do you believe?”
    “I believe”—he made no effort to muffle his hardness—“that we’ve got to find some way to stop Foul. That’s more important than anything. He’s trying to destroy the Land. I’m not going to let him get away with that. That’s who
I
am.”
    She stared at his affirmation. “Why? What does it have to do with you? If this is a dream, it doesn’t matter. And if it’s—” She had difficulty saying the words. “If it’s real, it’s not your problem. You can ignore it.”
    Covenant tasted old rage. “Foul laughs at lepers.”
    At that, a glare of comprehension touched her eyes. Her scowlsaid plainly, Nobody has the right to laugh at illness.
    In a tight voice, she asked, “What do we do now?”
    “Now?” He was weak with fatigue; but her question galvanized him. She had reasons, strengths, possibilities. The old man had not risked her gratuitously. “Now,” he said grimly, “if I can hold off my vertigo, we get down from here, and go find out what kind of trouble we’re in.”
    “Down?” She blinked at him. “I don’t know how we got up.”
    To answer her, he nodded toward the mountains. When she turned, she noticed the gap in the curve of the parapet facing the cliff. He watched as she crawled to the gap, saw what he already knew was there.
    The parapet circled the tip of a long spire of stone which angled toward the cliff under the Watch. There were rude stairs cut into the upper surface of the