The One Tree t2cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Twilight quickly darkened into night, turning the rocky verge to a blackness marked only by the sea's phosphorescence and the wan light of the stars; for there was no moon. To Linden, who had lost track of the days, the absence of the moon felt ominous and chilling. She could have believed that the Elohim had stricken it from the heavens in retribution. In the dark, she saw no way for the quest to win free of the moiling winds. Every shift seemed sharper than the one before, and every other tack carried the dromond closer to the ragged and fatal bluffs.

  But Honninscrave was a cunning reader of air currents, and at last he found the path which ran toward the safety of the open sea. Slipping free of the last toils of the Elohim, Starfare's Gem went south.

  For the rest of the night, the littoral loomed against the port horizon. But the next morning, Honninscrave angled a few points farther west of south, and the headland began to sink into the Sea. During the afternoon, another promontory briefly raised its head. But after that nothing remained to be seen in any direction except the sunlight rolling in brocade across the long green ocean.

  While they had fled through and away from the Raw, the Giants had held themselves clenched against the winds and the unknown purposes of the Elohim, tending the ship, springing to the Master's commands, with a tense and unwonted silence. But now their mood eased as Honninscrave allowed himself to relax and the ship sailed confidently into a perfect evening. At dusk, they gathered to hear the tale of Elemesnedene, which Pitchwife told with the full flourish and passion which the Giants loved. And Honninscrave described in detail what he had learned about the location of the One Tree. With the exact map of the stars to guide the quest, any possibility of failure appeared to fade. Slowly, Starfare's Gem regained much of its familiar good cheer.

  Linden was glad for that easement. The Giants had earned it, and she watched it with a physician's unselfish approval. But she did not share it. Covenant's condition outweighed the instinct for hope which she absorbed empathically from the Giants.

  The Haruchai had to care for him at every moment. He stayed wherever, and in whatever position, he was left. Standing or sitting in motion or at rest, he remained caught in his blankness, devoid of will or intent or desire. Nothing lived in him except his most preterite instincts. When he was deprived of support, he retained his balance against the slow stone rolling of the ship; when food was placed in his mouth, he chewed, swallowed. But nothing assuaged the fathomless plunge which lay behind his gaze. At unmotivated intervals, he spoke as distinctly as if he were reading the fate written on his forehead. Yet he did not react when he was touched.

  At last, Linden was driven to ask Brinn to take Covenant to his cabin. The pathos of his plight rested squarely on her shoulders, and she was unready to bear it. She had learned to believe that possession was evil-and she could think of no way to attempt his aid without possessing him.

  She clung to the hope that rest and peace would cure him. But she saw no amelioration. Well, she had promised herself that she would not shirk his healing, regardless of the price. She had not chosen this burden, just as she had not chosen the role of the Sun-Sage; but she did not mean to flee it. Yet she felt bitterly worn in the aftermath of Elemesnedene. And she could not clear her mind of rage at the way Covenant had been harmed. Intuitively, she sensed that the mood in which she attempted to penetrate his blankness would be crucial. If she went into him with anger, she might be answered with anger; and his ire would have the power to send Starfare's Gem to the bottom of the sea in pieces. Therefore for the present she stayed away from him and strove to compose herself.

  But when Covenant was not before her to demand her attention, she found that her sore nerves simply shifted their worry to another object-to Cable Seadreamer. His pain-bitten visage unconsciously wielded its ache over the entire Giantship. He wore a look of recognition, as if he had gained an insight which he would have feared to utter even if he had not already been bereft of his voice. Moving among his people, he stopped their talk, silenced their laughter like a loneliness that had no anodyne.

  And he was conscious of the hurt his mute woe gave. After a time, he could no longer endure it. He tried to leave his comrades, spare them the discomfort of his presence. But Pitchwife would not let him go. The deformed Giant hugged his friend as if he meant to coerce Seadreamer into accepting the care of his people. And Honninscrave and Sevinhand crowded around, urging upon him their support.

  Their response brought tears to Seadreamer's eyes, but not relief.

  Softly, painfully, the First asked Linden, “What has harmed him? His distress has grown beyond all bounds.”

  Linden had no answer. Without violating him, she could see nothing in Seadreamer except the extremity of his struggle for courage.

  She would have given anything to see such a struggle take place in Covenant.

  For three days while the dromond ran steadily west of south at a slight angle to the wind, she stayed away from him. The Haruchai tended him in his cabin, and she did not go there. She told herself that she was allowing time for a spontaneous recovery. But she knew the truth: she was procrastinating because she feared and loathed what she would have to do if he did not heal himself. In her imagination, she saw him sitting in his chamber exactly as he sat within his mind, uttering the litany of his bereavement in that abandoned voice.

  For those three days, Starfare's Gem returned to its normal routine. The general thrust of the wind remained constant; but it varied enough to keep the Giants busy aloft. And the other members of the Search occupied themselves in their own ways. The First spent considerable time cleaning her battle gear and sharpening her broadsword, as if she could see combat mustering beyond the horizon. And on several occasions she and Pitchwife went below together to seek a little privacy.

  Honninscrave seemed half feverish, unable to rest. When he Was not actively commanding the dromond, he engaged in long deliberations with the Anchormaster and Galewrath, planning the ship's course. However, Linden read him well enough to be sure that it was not the path of the quest which obsessed him, but rather Seadreamer's plight.

  She seldom saw Brinn; he did not leave his watch over Covenant. But Ceer and Hergrom busied themselves about the Giantship as they had formerly; and Cail shadowed her like a sentry. Whatever the Haruchai felt toward her did not show in their faces, in Cail's ready attendance. Yet she sensed that she was watched over, not out of concern for her, but to prevent her from harming the people around her.

  At times, she thought that Vain was the only member of the Search who had not been changed by Elemesnedene. He stood near the rail of the afterdeck on the precise spot where he had climbed aboard. The Giants had to work around him; he did not deign to notice that he was in their way. His black features revealed nothing.

  Again, Linden wondered what conceivable threat to themselves the Elohim had discerned in the Demondim-spawn, when his sole apparent purpose was to follow her and Covenant. But she could make nothing of it.

  While Starfare's Gem travelled the open Sea, she grew to feel progressively more lost among things she did not comprehend. She had taken the burden of decision upon herself; but she lacked the experience and conviction-and the power-which had enabled Covenant to bear it. He ached constantly at the back of her mind, an untreated wound. Only her stubborn loyalty to herself kept her from retreating to the loneliness of her cabin, hiding there like a little girl with a dirty dress so that the responsibility would fall to somebody else.

  On the morning of the fifth day after Starfare's Gem's escape from the Raw, she awakened in a mood of aggravated discomfiture, as if her sleep had been troubled by nightmares she could not remember. A vague apprehension nagged at the very limit of her senses, too far away to be grasped or understood. Fearing what she might learn, she asked Cail about Covenant. But the Haruchai reported no change. Anxiously, she left her cabin, went up to the afterdeck.

  As she scanned the deck, her inchoate sense of trouble increased. The sun shone in the east with an especial b
rightness, as if it were intent on its own clarity; but still the air seemed as chill as a premonition. Yet nothing appeared amiss. Galewrath commanded the wheeldeck with gruff confidence. And the crewmembers were busy about the vessel, warping it against the vagaries of the wind.

  The First, Honninscrave, and Seadreamer were nowhere to be seen. However, Pitchwife was at work near the aftermast, stirring the contents of a large stone vat. He looked up as Linden drew near him and winced at what he saw. “Chosen,” he said with an effort of good humour which was only partially successful, “were I less certain of our viands, I would believe that you have eaten badly and been made unwell. It is said that Sea and sun conduce to health and appetite-yet you wear the wan aspect of the sickbed. Are you ailed?”

  She shook her head imprecisely. “Something-I can't figure it out. I feel a disaster coming. But I don't know-” Groping for a way to distract herself, she peered into the vat. “Is that more of your pitch? How do you make it?”

  At that, he laughed, and his mirth came more easily. “Yes, Chosen. In all good sooth, this is my pitch. The vat is formed of dolomite, that it may not be fused as would the stone of Starfare's Gem. But as to the making of pitch-ah, that it skills nothing for me to relate. You are neither Giant nor wiver. And the power of pitch arises as does any other, from the essence of the adept who wields it. All power is an articulation of its wielder. There is no other source than life-and the desire of that life to express itself. But there must also be a means of articulation. I can say little but that this pitch is my chosen means. Having said that, I have left you scarce wiser than before.”

  Linden shrugged away his disclaimer. “Then what you're saying,” she murmured slowly, “is that the power of wild magic comes from Covenant himself? The ring is just his-his means of articulation?”

  He nodded. “I believe that to be sooth. But the means controls intimately the nature of what may be expressed. By my pitch I may accomplish nothing for the knitting of broken limbs, just as no theurgy of the flesh may seal stone as I do.”

  Musing half to herself, she replied, “That fits. At least with what Covenant says about the Staff of Law. Before it was destroyed. It supported the Law by its very nature. Only certain kinds of things could be done with it.”

  The malformed Giant nodded again; but she was already thinking something else. Turning to face him more directly, she demanded, "But what about the Elohim? They don't need any means. They are power. They can express anything they want, any way they want. Everything they said to us-all that stuff about Seadreamer's voice and Covenant's venom, and how Earthpower isn't the answer to Despite. It was all a lie." Her rage came back to her in a rush. She was trembling and white-knuckled before she could stop herself.

  Pitchwife considered her closely. “Be not so hasty in your appraisal of these Elohim” His twisted features seemed to bear Seadreamer's pain and Covenant's loss as if they had been inflicted on him personally; yet he rejected their implications, refused to be what he appeared. “They are who they are-a high and curious people-and their might is matched and conflicted and saddened by their limitations.”

  She started to argue; but he stopped her with a gesture that asked her to sit beside him against the base of the aftermast. Lowering himself carefully, he leaned his crippled back to the stone. When she joined him, her shoulder blades felt the sails thrumming through the mast. The vibrations tasted obscurely troubled and foreboding. They sent rumours along her nerves like precursors of something unpredictable. Starfare's Gem rolled with a discomforting irrhythm.

  “Chosen,” Pitchwife said, “I have not spoken to you concerning my examination by the Elohim.”

  She looked at him in surprise. The tale he had told during the first night out from the Raw had glossed over his personal encounters in the clachan as mere digressions. But now she saw that he had his own reasons for having withheld the story then-and for telling it now.

  “At the parting of our company in Elemesnedene,” he said quietly, as if he did not wish to be overheard, “I was accorded the guidance of one who named himself Starkin. He was an Elohim of neither more nor less wonder than any other, and so I followed him willingly. Among the lovely and manifold mazements of his people, I felt I had been transported to the truest faery heart of all the legends which have arisen from that place. The Giants have held these Elohim in an awe bordering on sanctity, and that awe I learned to taste in my own mouth. Like Grimmand Honninscrave before me, I came to believe that any giving or restitution was feasible in that eldritch realm.”

  The grotesque lines of his face were acute with memory as he spoke; yet his tone was one of calm surety, belying the suggestion that he had suffered any dismay.

  “But then,” he went on, “Starkin turned momentarily from me, and my examination began. For when again he approached, he had altered his shape. He stood before me as another being altogether. He had put aside his robe and his lithe limbs and his features-had transformed even his stature-and now he wore the form and habiliments of a Giant.” Pitchwife sighed softly. "In every aspect he had recreated himself flawlessly.

  "He was myself.

  "Yet not myself as you behold me, but rather myself as I might be in dreams. A Pitchwife of untainted birth and perfect growth. Withal that the image was mine beyond mistaking, he stood straight and tall above me, in all ways immaculately made, and beautiful with the beauty of Giants. He was myself as even Gossamer Glowlimn my love might desire me in her pity. For who would not have loved such a Giant, or desired him?

  “Chosen”-he met Linden with his clear gaze-“there was woe in that sight. In my life I have been taught many things, but until that moment I had not been taught to look upon myself and descry that I was ugly. At my birth, a jest had been wrought upon me-a jest the cruelty of which Starkin displayed before me.”

  Pain for him surged up in her. Only the simple peace of his tone and eyes enabled her to hold back her outrage. How had he borne it?

  He answered squarely, “This was an examination which searched me to the depths of my heart. But at last its truth became plain to me. Though I stood before myself in all the beauty for which I might have lusted, it was not I who stood there, but Starkin. This Giant was manifestly other than myself, for he could not alter his eyes-eyes of gold that shed light, but gave no warmth to what they beheld. And my eyes remained my own. He could not see himself with my sight. Thus I passed unharmed through the testing he had devised for me.”

  Studying him with an ache of empathy, Linden saw that he was telling the truth. His examination had given him pain, but no hurt. And his unscathed aspect steadied her, enabling her to see past her anger to the point of his story. He was trying to explain his perception that the Elohim could only be who they were and nothing else-that any might was defined and limited by its very nature. No power could transcend the strictures which made its existence possible.

  Her ire faded as she followed Pitchwife's thinking. No power? she wanted to ask. Not even wild magic? Covenant seemed capable of anything. What conceivable stricture could bind his white fire? Was there in truth some way that Foul could render him helpless in the end?

  The necessity of freedom, she thought. If he's already sold himself—

  But as she tried to frame her question, her sense of disquiet returned. It intruded on her pulse; blood began to throb suddenly in her temples. Something had happened. Tension cramped her chest as she fumbled for perception.

  Pitchwife was saying wryly, “Your pardon, Chosen. I see that I have not given you ease.”

  She shook her head. “That's not it.” The words left her mouth before she realised what she was saying. “What happened to Vain?”

  The Demondim-spawn was gone. His place near the railing was empty.

  “Naught I know of,” Pitchwife replied, surprised by her reaction. “A short while after the sun's rising, he strode forward as though his purpose had awakened in him. To the foremast he fared, and it he greeted with such a bow and smile as I mislike to remember.
But then he lapsed to his former somnolence. There he stands yet. Had he moved, those who watch him would surely have informed us.”

  “It is true,” Cail said flatly. “Ceer guards him.”

  Under her breath, Linden muttered, “You've got to be kidding,” and climbed to her feet. “This I've got to see.” When Pitchwife joined her, she stalked away toward Foodfendhall and the foredeck.

  There she saw Vain as he had been described, facing the curved surface of the mast from an arm's length away. His posture was the same as always: elbows slightly crooked at his sides; knees flexing just enough to maintain his balance against the choppy gait of the dromond; back straight. Yet to her gaze he wore a telic air. He confronted the mast as if they were old comrades, frozen on the verge of greeting one another.

  To herself, she murmured, “What the hell-?”

  “Forsooth,” responded Pitchwife with a light chuckle. “Had this Demondim-spawn not been gifted to the ur-Lord by a Giant, I would fear he means to ravish the maidenhood of our foremast.” At that, laughter spouted from the nearby crewmembers,

  then spread like a kinship of humour through the rigging as his jest was repeated to those who had not heard it.

  But Linden was not listening to him. Her ears had caught another sound-a muffled shout from somewhere belowdecks. As she focused her hearing, she identified Honninscrave's stertorous tones.

  He was calling Seadreamer's name. Not in anger or pain, but in surprise. And trepidation.

  The next moment, Seadreamer erupted from one of the hatchways and charged forward as if he meant to hurl himself at Vain. Honninscrave followed him; but Linden's attention was locked on the mute Giant. He looked wild and visionary, like a prophet or a madman; and the scar across his visage stood out stark and pale, underlining his eyes with intensity. Cries he could not utter strained the muscles of his neck.