Thomas Covenant 03: Power That Preserves by Stephen R. Donaldson

could feel his heart itself trembling, quivering between each beat as it labored to carry the strain. The haze of his fever thickened until at odd moments he feared that he had lost his sight. In the blur, he quailed away from the dazzles of sunlight which sprang at him off the stream; but when the creek passed through shadows, it looked so cool and healing that he could hardly restrain himself from stumbling into it, burying his face in its anodyne.
    Yet all the while he knew he could not deviate from the strait path of his trek. If he failed to find help for the child, then everything he had already done for her would be useless, bereft of meaning. He could not stop. Her wound would not tolerate his futility. He saw too much of his lost son Roger in her bare shin. Despite the nails of pain which crucified him, he lurched onward.
    Then in the distance he heard shouts, like people wailing for someone lost. He jerked to a swaying halt on stiff legs, and tried to look around. But he seemed to have lost control of his head. It wobbled vainly on his neck, as if the weight of his swelling threw it out of joint, and he was unable to face it in the direction of the shouts.
    In his arms, the girl whimpered pitifully, “Mommy. Daddy.”
    He fought his black tight pain to frame the word, Help . But no sound came between his lips. He forced his vocal cords to make some kind of noise.
    “Help me.”
    It was no louder than a whisper.
    A sound like hoarse sobs shook him, but he could not tell whether they came from him or from the girl. Weakly, almost blindly, he straightened his arms, lifted the child outward as if he were offering her to the shouts.
    They became a woman’s voice and took on words. “Karen! Here she is! Over here! Oh, Karen! my baby!” Running came toward him through the leaves and branches; it sounded like the blade of a winter wind cutting at him from the depths of his fever. At last he was able to see the people. A woman hurried down the side of a hill, and a man ran anxiously after her. “Karen!” the woman cried.
    The child reached out toward the woman and sobbed, “Mommy! Mommy!”
    An instant later, the burden was snatched from Covenant’s arms. “Karen. Oh, my baby,” the woman moaned as she hugged the child. “We were so frightened. Why did you run away? Are you all right?” Without a glance at Covenant, she said, “Where did you find her? She ran away this morning, and we’ve been frightened half to death.” As if this needed some explanation, she went on, “We’re camping over there a ways. Dave has Good Friday off, and we decided to camp out. We never thought she would run away.”
    The man caught up with her, and she started speaking to the child again. “Oh, you naughty, naughty girl. Are you all right? Let me look at you.”
    The girl kept sobbing in pain and relief as the woman held her at arm’s length to inspect her. At once, the woman saw the tourniquet and the swelling and the cuts. She gave a low scream, and looked at Covenant for the first time.
    “What happened?” she demanded. “What’ve you done to her?” Suddenly she stopped. A look of horror stretched her face. She backed away toward the man, and screamed at him, “Dave! It’s that leper! That Covenant!”
    “What?” the man gasped. Righteous indignation rushed up in him. “You bastard!” he spat belligerently, and started toward Covenant.
    Covenant thought that the man was going to hit him; he seemed to feel the blow coming at him from a great distance. Watching it, he lost his balance, stumbled backward a step, and sat down heavily. Red pain flooded across his sight. When it cleared, he was vaguely surprised to find that he was not being kicked. But the man had stopped a dozen feet away; he stood with his fists clenched, trying not to show that he was afraid to come closer.
    Covenant struggled to speak, explain that the child still needed help. But a long, stunned moment passed before he was able to dredge words