The One Tree t2cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  The First did not hesitate. Striding from circle to circle, she moved swiftly among the hustin. Ceer joined her. Honninscrave and Seadreamer followed, warding her back. Linden wanted to take a moment to question the Lady; but she had no time. Cail caught her arm, swung her after the Giants.

  Behind the company, the Guards turned, reformed their ranks. Moving stiffly over the stone slabs, they followed Vain and Findail toward the Auspice.

  When the Giants entered the brighter illumination around the throne, Brinn suddenly appeared out of the shadows. He did not pause to explain how he had come to be there. Flatly, he said, “Hergrom has discovered the ur-Lord. Come.” Turning, he sped back into the darkness behind the gaddhi's seat.

  Linden glanced at the hustin. They were moving grimly, resolutely, but made no effort to catch up with the interlopers. Perhaps they had now been commanded to block any retreat.

  She could not worry about retreat. Covenant was in the Kemper's hands. She ran after the First and Ceer into the shadow of the Auspice.

  Here, too, the wall was deeply carved with tormented shapes like a writhe of ghouls. Even in clear light, the doorway would have been difficult to find, for it was cunningly hidden among the bas-reliefs. But Brinn had learned the way. He went directly to the door.

  It swung inward under the pressure of his hand, admitting the company to a narrow stair which gyred upward through the stone. Brinn led, with Honninscrave, Seadreamer, and then Ceer at his back. Linden followed the First. Urgency pulled at her heart, denying the shortness of her breath, the scant strength of her legs. She wanted to cry out Covenant's name.

  The stair seemed impossibly long; but at last it reached a door that opened into a large round chamber. The place was furnished and appointed like a seduction room. Braziers shed fight over its intense blue rugs, its lush cushions and couches: the tapestries bedecking the walls depicted a variety of lurid scenes. Almost instantly, the incense in the air began to fill Linden's lungs with giddiness.

  Ahead of her, the Giants and Haruchai came to a halt. A husta stood there with its spear levelled at the questers, guarding the ironwork stair which rose from the centre of the chamber.

  This husta had no doubt of its duty. One cheek was discoloured with bruises, and Linden saw other signs that the Guard had been in a fight. If Hergrom had indeed found Covenant, he must have passed through this chamber to do so. But the husta was impervious to its pains. It confronted the company fearlessly.

  Brinn bounded forward. He feinted at the Guard, then dodged the spear and leaped for the railing of the stair.

  The husta tracked him with the point of its spear to strike him in the back. But Seadreamer was already moving. With momentum, weight, and oaken strength, he delivered a blow which stretched the Guard out among the cushions like a sated lover.

  As a precaution, Honninscrave jumped after the husta, caught hold of its spear and snapped the shaft.

  The rest of the company rushed after Brinn.

  The stairs took them even higher into the seclusion of Kemper's Pitch.

  Gripping the rail, Linden hauled herself from tread to tread, forced her leaden legs to carry her. The incense and the spiralling affected her like nightmare. She did not know how much farther she could ascend. When she reached the next level, she might be too weak to do anything except struggle for breath.

  But her will held, carried her panting and dizzy into the lucubrium of the gaddhi's Kemper.

  Her eyes searched the place frenetically. This was clearly Kasreyn's laboratory, where he wrought his arts. But she could not bring anything she saw into focus. Long tables covered with equipment, crowded shelves, strange contrivances seemed to reel around her.

  Then her vision cleared. Beyond the spot where the Giants and Brinn had stopped lay a Guard. It was dead, sprawled in a congealing pool of its own rank blood. Hergrom stood over it like a defiance. Deliberately, he nodded toward one side of the lucubrium.

  Kasreyn was there.

  In his own demesne, surrounded by his possessions and powers, he appeared unnaturally tall. His lean arms were folded like wrath over his chest; but he remained as still as Hergrom, as if he and the Haruchai were poised in an impasse. His golden ocular dangled from its ribbon around his neck. His son slept like a tumour on his back.

  He was standing in front of a chair which bristled with bindings and apparatus.

  Within the bindings sat Covenant.

  He was looking at his companions; but his eyes were empty, as if he had no soul.

  With her panting clenched between her teeth, Linden slipped past the Giants, hastened forward. For an instant, she glared at Kasreyn, let him see the rage naked in her face. Then she turned her back on him and approached Covenant.

  Her hands shook as she tried to undo the bonds. They were too tight for her. When Brinn joined her, she left that task to him and instead concentrated on examining Covenant.

  She found no damage. His flesh was unmarked. Behind the slackness of his mouth and the confusion of his beard, nothing had changed. She probed into his body, inspected his bones and organs with her percipience; but internally also he had suffered no harm.

  His ring still hung like a fetter on the last finger of his half-hand.

  Relief stunned her. For a moment, she became lightheaded with incomprehension, had to steady herself on Brinn's shoulder as he released the ur-Lord. Had Hergrom stopped Kasreyn in time? Or had the Kemper simply failed? Had the silence of the Elohim surpassed even his arts?

  Had it in fact defended Covenant from hurt?

  “As you see,” Kasreyn said, “he is uninjured.” A slight tremble of age and ire afflicted his voice. “Despite your thought of me, I have sought only his succour. Had this Haruchai not foiled me with his presence and needless bloodshed, your Thomas Covenant would have been restored to you whole and well. But no trustworthiness can withstand your suspicion. Your doubt fulfils itself, for it prevents me from accomplishing that which would teach you the honesty of my intent.”

  Linden spun on him. Her relief recoiled into fury. “You bastard. If you're so goddamn trustworthy, why did you do all this?”

  “Chosen.” Indignation shone through the rheum of his eyes. “Do any means exist by which I could have persuaded you to concede Thomas Covenant to me alone?”

  With all the strength of his personality, he projected an image of offended virtue. But Linden was not daunted. The discrepancy between his stance and his hunger was palpable to her. She was angry enough to tell him what she saw, expose the range of her sight. But she had no time. Heavy feet rang on the iron stairs. Behind the reek of death in the air, she felt hustin surging upward. As Brinn drew Covenant from the stair, she turned to warn her companions. They did not need the warning. The Giants and Haruchai had already poised themselves in defensive positions around the room.

  But the first individual who appeared from the stairwell was not one of the hustin. It was Rant Absolain.

  The Lady Alif was at his back. She had taken the time to cover herself with a translucent robe.

  Behind them came the Guards.

  When she saw the fallen husta, the Lady Alif's face betrayed an instant of consternation. She had not expected this. Reading her, Linden guessed that the Favoured had roused the gaddhi in an effort to further frustrate Kasreyn's plans. But the dead Guard changed everything. Before the Lady mastered her expression, it gave away her realization that she had made a mistake.

  With a sting of apprehension, Linden saw what the mistake was.

  The gaddhi did not glance at Kasreyn. He did not notice his guests. His attention was locked to the dead Guard. He moved forward a step, two steps, stumbled to his knees in the dark blood. It splattered thickly, staining his linen. His hands fluttered at the husta'? face. Then he tried to turn the Guard over onto its back; but it was too heavy for him. His hands came away covered with blood. He stared at them, gazed blindly up at the crowd around him. His mouth trembled. “My Guard.” He sounded like a bereaved child. “Who has
slain my Guard?”

  For a moment, the lucubrium was intense with silence. Then Hergrom stepped forward. Linden felt peril thronging in the air. She tried to call him back. But she was too late. Hergrom acknowledged his responsibility to spare his companions from the gaddhi's wrath.

  Hustin continued to arrive. The Giants and Haruchai held themselves ready; but they were weaponless and outnumbered.

  Slowly, Rant Absolain's expression focused on Hergrom. He arose from his knees, dripping gouts of blood. For a moment, he stared at Hergrom as if he were appalled by the depth of the Haruchai's crime. Then he said, “Kemper.” His voice was a snarl of passion in the back of his throat. Grief and outrage gave him the stature he had lacked earlier. “Punish him.”

  Kasreyn moved among the Guards and questers, went to stand near Rant Absolain. “O gaddhi, blame him not.” The Kemper's self-command made him sound telic rather than contrite. “The fault is mine. I have made many misjudgments.”

  At that, the gaddhi broke like an over-stretched rope.

  “I want him punished!” With both fists, he hammered at Kasreyn's chest, pounding smears of blood into the yellow robe. The Kemper recoiled a step; and Rant Absolain turned to hurl his passion at Hergrom. “That Guard is mine! Mine! Then he faced Kasreyn again. ”In all Bhrathairealm, I possess nothing! I am the gaddhi, and the gaddhi is only a servant!“ Rage and self-pity writhed in him. ”The Sandhold is not mine! The Riches are not mine! The Chatelaine attends me only at your whim!“ He stooped to the dead husta and scooped up handfuls of the congealing fluid, flung them at Kasreyn, at Hergrom. A gobbet trickled and fell from Kasreyn's chin, but he ignored it. ”Even my Favoured come to me from you! After you have used them!“ Rant Absolain's fists jerked blows through the air. ”But the Guard is mine! They alone obey me without looking first to learn your will!“ With a shout, he concluded, ”I want him punished!"

  Rigid as madness, he faced the Kemper. After a moment, Kasreyn said, “O gaddhi, your will is my will.” His tone was suffused with regret. As he stepped slowly, ruefully, toward Hergrom, the tension concealed within his robe conveyed a threat. “Hergrom-” Linden began. Then her throat locked on the warning. She did not know what the threat was.

  Her companions braced themselves to leap to Hergrom's aid. But they, too, could not define the threat.

  The Kemper stopped before Hergrom, studied him briefly. Then Kasreyn lifted his ocular to his left eye. Linden tried to relax. The Haruchai had already proven themselves impervious to the Kemper's geas. Hergrom's flat orbs showed no fear.

  Gazing through his eyepiece, Kasreyn reached out with careful unmenace and touched his index finger to the centre of Hergrom's forehead.

  Hergrom's only reaction was a slight widening of his eyes.

  The Kemper dropped both hands, sagged as if in weariness or sorrow. Without a word, he turned away. The Guards parted for him as he went to the chair where Covenant had been bound. There he seated himself, though he could not lean back because of the child he carried. With his fingers, he hid his face as if he were mourning.

  But to Linden the emotion he concealed felt like glee.

  She was unsure of her perception. The Kemper was adept at disguising the truth about himself. But Rant Absolain's reaction was unmistakable. He was grinning in fierce triumph.

  His mouth moved as if he wanted to say something that would crush the company, demonstrate his own superiority; but no words came to him. Yet his passion for the Guards sustained him. He might indeed have been a monarch as he moved away. Commanding the hustin to follow him, he took the Lady Alif by the hand and left the lucubrium.

  As she started downward, the Lady cast one swift look like a pang of regret toward Linden. Then she was gone, and the Guards were thumping down the iron stairs behind her. Two of them bore their dead fellow away.

  None of the questers shifted while the hustin filed from the chamber. Vain's bland ambiguous smile was a reverse image of Findail's alert pain. The First stood with her arms folded over her chest, glaring like a hawk. Honninscrave and Seadreamer remained poised nearby. Brinn had placed Covenant at Linden's side, where the four Haruchai formed a cordon around the people they had sworn to protect.

  Linden held herself rigid, pretending severity. But her sense of peril did not abate.

  The Guards were leaving. Hergrom had suffered no discernible harm. In a moment, Kasreyn would be alone with the questers. He would be in their hands. Surely he could not defend himself against so many of them. Then why did she feel that the survival of the company had become so precarious?

  Brinn gazed at her intently. His hard eyes strove to convey a message without words. Intuitively, she understood him.

  The last husta was on the stairs. The time had almost come. Her knees were trembling. She flexed them slightly, sought to balance herself on the balls of her feet.

  The Kemper had not moved. From within the covert of his hands, he said in a tone of rue, or cleverly mimicked rue, “You may return to your rooms. Doubtless the gaddhi will later summon you. I must caution you to obey him. Yet I would you could credit that I regret all which has transpired here.”

  The moment had come. Linden framed the words in her mind. Time and again, she had dreamed of slaying Gibbon-Raver. She had even berated Covenant for his restraint in Revelstone. She had said, Some infections have to be cut out. She had believed that. What was power for, if not to extirpate evil? Why else had she become who she was?

  But now the decision was upon her-and she could not speak. Her heart leaped with fury at everything Kasreyn had done, and still she could not speak. She was a doctor, not a killer. She could not give Brinn the permission he wanted.

  His mien wore an inflectionless contempt as he turned his back on her. Mutely, he referred his desires to the leadership of the First.

  The Swordmain did not respond. If she were aware of her opportunity, she elected to ignore it. Without a word to the Kemper or her companions, she strode to the stairs.

  Linden gave a dumb groan of relief or regret, she did not know which.

  A faint frown creased Brinn's forehead. But he did not hesitate. When Honninscrave had followed the First, Brinn and Hergrom took Covenant downward. At once, Cail and Ceer steered Linden toward the stairs. Seadreamer placed himself like a bulwark behind the Haruchai. Leaving Vain and Findail to follow at their own pace, the company descended from Kemper's Pitch. Clenched in a silence like a fist, they returned to their quarters in the Second Circinate.

  Along the way, they encountered no Guards. Even The Majesty was empty of hustin.

  The First entered the larger chamber across the hall from the bedrooms. While Linden and the others joined the Swordmain, Ceer remained in the passage to ward the door.

  Brinn carefully placed Covenant on one of the settees. Then he confronted the First and Linden together. His impassive voice conveyed a timbre of accusation to Linden's hearing.

  “Why did we not slay the Kemper? There lay our path to safety.”

  The First regarded him as if she were chewing her tongue for self-command. A hard moment passed between them before she replied, “The hustin number fourscore hundred. The Horse, fifteenscore. We cannot win our way with bloodshed.”

  Linden felt like a cripple. Once again, she had been too paralyzed to act; contradictions rendered her useless. She could not even spare herself the burden of supporting Brinn.

  “They don't mean anything. I don't know about the Horse. But the Guards haven't got any minds of their own. They're helpless without Kasreyn to tell them what to do.”

  Honninscrave looked at her in surprise. “But the gaddhi said-”

  “He's mistaken.” The cries she had been stifling tore at the edges of her voice. “Kasreyn keeps him like a pet.”

  “Then is it also your word,” asked the First darkly, “that we should have slain this Kemper?”

  Linden failed to meet the First's stare. She wanted to shout, Yes! And, No. Did she not have enough blood on her hands?

&nb
sp; “We are Giants,” the Swordmain said to Linden's muteness. “We do not murder.” Then she turned her back on the matter.

  But she was a trained fighter. The rictus of her shoulders said as clearly as an expostulation that the effort of restraint in the face of so much peril and mendacity was tearing her apart.

  A blur filled Linden's sight. Every judgment found her wanting. Even Covenant's emptiness was an accusation for which she had no answer.

  What had Kasreyn done to Hergrom?

  The light and dark of the world were invisible within the Sandhold. But eventually servants came to the chamber, announcing sunrise with trays of food. Linden's thoughts were dulled by fatigue and strain; yet she roused herself to inspect the viands. She expected treachery in everything. However, a moment's examination showed her that the food was clean. Deliberately, she and her companions ate their fill, trying to prepare themselves for the unknown.

  With worn and red-rimmed eyes, she studied Hergrom. From the brown skin of his face to the vital marrow of his bones, he showed no evidence of harm, no sign that he had ever been touched. But the unforgiving austerity of his visage prevented her from asking him any questions. The Haruchai did not trust her. In refusing to call for Kasreyn's death, she had rejected what might prove the only chance to save Hergrom.

  Some time later, Rire Grist arrived. He was accompanied by another man, a soldier with an atrabilious mien whom the Caitiffin introduced as his aide. He greeted the questers as if he had heard nothing concerning the night's activities. Then he said easily, "My friends, the gaddhi chooses to pleasure himself this morning with a walk upon the Sandwall. He asks for your attendance. The sun shines with wondrous clarity, granting a view of the Great Desert which may interest you. Will you come?"

  He appeared calm and confident. But Linden read in the tightness around his eyes that the peril had not been averted.

  The bitterness of the First's thoughts was plain upon her countenance: Have we choice in the matter? But Linden had nothing to say. She had lost the power of decision. Her fears beat about her head like dark wings, making everything impossible. They're going to kill Hergrom!