The One Tree t2cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Honninscrave,” the First said like iron, “you and Seadreamer must continue to the Spikes. Bear the Chosen and Cail Haruchai with you. Pitchwife and I will do what we may to ward you.”

  Neither brother protested. No Giant of the Search could have refused her when she used that tone. Slowly, Honninscrave and Seadreamer withdrew. After only a fraction of hesitation, Cail also retreated. Vain moved to stay with Linden. Together, the First and Pitchwife stood to meet the gaddhi's Horse.

  But soon both Honninscrave and Seadreamer stopped. Linden felt Seadreamer's muscles yearning toward the First. Honninscrave clenched himself as if he did not know how to abandon a comrade. Caught between conflicting needs, they watched the mounted soldiers pound forward.

  The First held her falchion in her hands and waited. Pitchwife hunched forward with his hands braced on his knees, gathering breath and strength for battle. In the immanent silver of the light, they looked like colossal icons, numinously silent and puissant.

  Then a command was barked in the Bhrathair tongue. The horses bunched to a halt. Sparks squealed between iron and stone.

  While the others stopped, one of the mounts came dancing with froth on its lips to confront the Giants. A familiar voice said, “First of the Search, I salute you. Who would have believed you capable of so casting Bhrathairealm into chaos?”

  The First made a warning sign with the tip of her sword. “Rire Grist,” she said in a voice of quiet danger. “Return whence you have come. I do not desire to shed more blood.”

  The Caitiffin's mount fought its bit; he controlled the frightened animal roughly. “You mistake me.” His urbane diplomacy was gone. He sounded now like a soldier, and his tone held a note of eagerness, “Had I possessed the wisdom to take your true measure, I would have aided you earlier.” A note of ambition. “Kasreyn is dead. The gaddhi is little better than a madman. I have come to escort you to the Spikes, that at least you may hope for your vessel in safety.”

  The First's blade did not waver. Softly, she asked, “Will you rule Bhrathairealm, Caitiffin?”

  “If I do not, another will.”

  “Perhaps,” she pursued. “Yet why do you seek to aid us?”

  He had his answer ready. “I wish the goodwill of the tale you will bear to other lands. And I wish also that you should begone swiftly, that I may set about my work free of powers I can neither comprehend nor master.”

  He paused, then added with palpable sincerity, “Moreover, I am grateful. Had you failed, I would not have endured long in Kasreyn's favour. Perhaps I would have been given to the Sandgorgons.” A shudder tinged his voice. “Gratitude has meaning to me.”

  The First considered him for a moment. Then she demanded, “If you speak sooth, call back the warships which harry our dromond.'”

  His horse flinched. He wrestled with it momentarily before he answered. “That I cannot do.” He was taut with strain. “They obey the sirens, which I know not how to silence. I have no means to make myself heard at such a distance.”

  As if involuntarily, the First looked out into the Harbour. There, the swift trireme had forced Starfare's Gem to turn. The Giantship sailed broadside to the galleass, exposed for attack. The penteconter was closing rapidly.

  “Then I require evidence of your good faith.” For an instant, her voice quivered; but she quickly smothered her concern with sternness. “You must send your command back to the Sandhold in search of Thomas Covenant. Those who oppose him must be stopped. He must have a mount, that he may overtake us with all haste. And you must accompany us alone. You will provide for our safety at the Spikes. And from that vantage you will seek means to be heard by these warships.” Her threat was as plain as her blade.

  For a moment, the Caitiffin hesitated. He let his horse curvet as if its prancing could help him to a decision. But he had come too far to turn back. Wheeling toward his soldiers, he dismounted. One of them took the reins of his destrier while he barked a string of commands. At once, his squad turned, sprang into a gallop back up the long slope of the Sandwall.

  When they were gone, Rire Grist bowed to the First. She acknowledged his decision with a nod. In silence, she put out her hand to Pitchwife's shoulder. Together, they started again toward the Spikes. If she recognized the disobedience of her companions, she did not reprove it.

  With Cail at his side like a warder, Rire Grist hurried to keep pace with the Giants as they strode northward.

  Another fireball revealed that Sevinhand had somehow eluded the snare of the warships. The dromond was once again cutting straight for the Spikes.

  In the glare as the fireball burst across the water, the Spikes themselves were clearly visible. They rose ominously against the horizon, and the gap between them seemed too small for any escape.

  Every tack and turn the Glantship was forced to make delayed its progress. The company was well in advance of the dromond as they approached the western tower. There the Caitiffin ran ahead with Cail beside him, shouted commands up at the embrasures. In moments, he was answered. The particular timbre of Seadreamer's muscles told Linden that he understood what the Bhrathair said-and that Rire Grist was not betraying the company.

  But his fidelity made no impression on her. She felt empty of everything except her arm's numbness and Starfare's Gem's peril and Covenant's absence. She did not listen to the Bhrathair. Her hearing was directed back along the Sandwall toward the sirens and the hope of hoof beats.

  Soldiers came out of the Spike, saluted Rire Grist. He spoke to them rapidly. They trotted back into the tower, accompanied by the Caitiffin. The First sent Honninscrave in Cail's place to ensure that Rire Grist did not change his mind. Shortly, commands echoed in the narrows as the Caitiffin shouted across to the eastern Spike.

  Together, the Giants moved to the corner of the tower so that they could watch both the Harbour and the Sandwall. There they waited. In Seadreamer's arms Linden also waited. But she felt that she shared nothing with them except their silence. Her eyes did not reach as far as theirs. Perhaps her hearing also did not reach as far. And the dromond's, granite dance of survival across the water frayed her concentration. She did not know how to believe that either Covenant or the Giantship would endure.

  After a long moment, Pitchwife breathed, “If he comes belatedly-If Starfare's Gem must await him within these narrows-”

  “Aye,” growled the First. “No catapult will fail at such a target. Then Rire Grist's good faith will count for nothing.”

  Cail did not speak. He stood with his arms folded on his chest as if his rectitude were full of violence and had to be restrained.

  Softly, Pitchwife muttered, “Now, Sevinhand.” His fists beat lightly on the parapet. “Now.”

  After a time which contained no sound except the distant and forlorn rage of the alarms and the faint wet soughing of water against the base of the Spike, the Sandwall suddenly echoed with the clamour of oars. Tricked by one of Sevinhand's manoeuvres, the trireme and the penteconter fought to avoid disabling each other. A fireball broke on the rocks directly below the company, sending tremors of detonation through the stone.

  The blast absorbed Linden's senses. White blotches burned toward red across her vision. She did not hear him coming.

  Abruptly, the Giants turned to face the crooked length of the Sandwall. Seadreamer set her on her feet. Her balance failed her; she nearly fell. Cail took three steps forward, then stopped like an act of homage.

  A horse appeared to condense out of the moonlight at a run. As the thud and splash of the oars regained rhythm, hooves came staccato through the noise. Almost without transition, the horse neared the company. It stumbled to a halt, stood with its legs splayed on the edge of exhaustion. Brinn sat in the saddle.

  He saluted the Giants. Lifting one leg over the saddlehorn, he dismounted. Only then did Covenant become visible. He had been crouching against the Haruchai's back as if he feared for his life-dismayed by the speed and height of the horse. Brinn had to help him down.

  “Wel
l come, Giantfriend,” the First murmured. Her tone expressed more gladness than a shout. “Well come indeed.”

  From out of the dark, wings rustled. A shadow flitted up the roadway toward Covenant. For a moment, an owl poised itself in the air above him as if it meant to land on his shoulder. But then the bird and its shadow dissolved, poured together on the stone as Findail reshaped his human form. In the vague light, he looked like a man who had been horrified and could see no end to it.

  Covenant stood where Brinn had set him as if all the courage had run out of him. He seemed benighted and beyond hope. He might have fallen back under the power of the Elohim. Linden started toward him without thinking. Her good arm reached out to him like an appeal.

  His power-ravaged gaze turned toward her. He stared at her as if the sight surpassed everything he had suffered. “Linden-” His voice broke on her name. His arms hung at his sides as if they were weighed down by pity and need. His tone rasped with the effort he made to speak. “Are you all right?”

  She dismissed the question. It had no importance compared to the anguish reflecting from his face. His dismay at all the killing he had done was palpable to her. Urgently, she said, “You had to do it. There was no other way. We'd already be dead if you hadn't.” Covenant, please! Don't blame yourself for saving our lives.

  But her words brought back his pain, as if until now only his concern for her and the company had protected him from what he had done. “Hundreds of them,” he groaned; and his face crumpled like Kemper's Pitch. “They didn't have a chance.” His features seemed to break into tears, repeating the fires of the Harbour and the Spike in fragments of grief or sweat. “Findail says I'm the one who's going to destroy the Earth.”

  Oh, Covenant! Linden wanted to embrace him, but her numb arm dangled from her shoulder as if it were withering.

  “Giantfriend,” the First interposed, driven by exigency. “We must go down to Starfare's Gem.”

  He bore himself like a cripple. Yet somewhere he found the strength to hear the First, understand her. Or perhaps it was guilt rather than strength. He moved past Linden toward the Spike as if he could not face his need for her. He was still trying to refuse her.

  Unable to comprehend his abnegation, she had no choice but to follow him. Her pants had become as stiff and necessary as death after Ceer's last wound. Her arm would not move. After all, Covenant was right to refuse her. Sooner or later, the Haruchai would tell him about Ceer. Then she would never be able to touch him. When Pitchwife took the place Cail had repudiated at her side, she let him steer her into the tower.

  There Honninscrave rejoined the company. Guided by information Rire Grist had given him, he led the way down a series of stairs which ended on a broad shelf of rock no more than the height of a Giant above the sea. Starfare's Gem had already thrust its prow between the Spikes.

  Here at last the sirens became inaudible, drowned by the echoing surge of water. But Honninscrave made himself heard over the noise, caught the dromond's attention. Moments later, as Starfare's Gem drew abreast of the rock, lines were thrown outward. In a flurry of activity, the companions were hauled up to the decks of the Giantship.

  The huge penteconter came beating into the gap hardly a spear's cast behind the dromond. But as Starfare's Gem fled, Rire Grist kept his word. He and his soldiers launched a volley of fire-arrows across the bows of the penteconter, signalling unmistakably his intent to prevent any pursuit of the Giantship. Like the Lady Alif, he had found his own conception of honour in the collapse of Kasreyn's rule.

  The warship could not have been aware of that collapse. But Rire Grist was known as the Kemper's emissary. Accustomed to the authority and caprice of tyrants, the crew of the penteconter began to back oars furiously.

  Lifting its sails to the wind, Starfare's Gem ran scatheless out into the open sea and the setting of the moon.

  Twenty One: Mother's Child

  FINALLY Linden's arm began to hurt. Her blood became acid, a slow dripping of corrosion from her shoulder down along the nerves above her elbow. Her forearm and hand still remained as numb and heavy as dead meat; but now she knew that they would eventually be restored as well. Every sensate inch of her upper arm burned and throbbed with aggrievement.

  That pain demanded attention, awareness, like a scourge. Repeatedly her old black mood rolled in like a fog to obscure the landscape of her mind; and repeatedly the hurt whipped it back. You never loved me anyway. When she looked out from her cabin at the gray morning lying fragmented on the choppy seas, her eyes misted and ran as if she were dazzled by sheer frustration. Her right hand lay in her lap. She kneaded it fiercely, constantly, with her left, trying to force some meaning into the inert digits. Ceer! she moaned to herself. The thought of what she had done made her writhe.

  She was sitting in her cabin as she had sat ever since Pitchwife had brought her below. His concern had expressed itself in murmurings and weak jests, tentative offers of consolation; but he had not known what to do with her, and so he had left her to herself. Shortly after dawn-a pale dawn, obscured by clouds-he had returned with a tray of food. But she had not spoken to him. She had been too conscious of who it was that served her. Pitchwife, not Cail. The judgment of the Haruchai hung over her as if her crimes were inexpiable.

  She understood Cail. He did not know how to forgive. And that was just She also did not know.

  The burning spread down into her biceps. Perhaps she should have taken off her clothes and washed them. But Ceer's blood suited her. She deserved it. She could no more have shed that blame than Covenant could have removed his leprosy. Suffering on the rack of his guilt and despair, he had held himself back from her as if he did not merit her concern and she had missed her chance to touch him. One touch might have been enough. The image of him that she had met when she had opened herself to him, rescued him from the affliction of the Elohim, was an internal ache for which she had no medicine and no anodyne-an image as dear and anguished as love. But surely by now Cail had told him about Ceer. And anything he might have felt toward her would be curdled to hate. She did not know how to bear it.

  Yet it had to be borne. She had spent too much of her life fleeing. Her ache seemed to expand until it filled the cabin. She would never forget the blood that squeezed rhythmically, fatally, past the pressure of Ceer's fist. She rose to her feet. Her pants scraped her thighs, had already rubbed the skin raw. Her numb hand and elbow dangled from her shoulder as if they had earned extirpation. Stiffly, she moved to the door, opened it, and went out to face her ordeal.

  The ascent to the afterdeck was hard for her. She had been more than a day without food. The exertions of the previous night had exhausted her. And Starfare's Gem was not riding steadily. The swells were rough, and the dromond bucked its way through them as if the loss of its midmast had made it erratic. But behind the sounds of wind and sea, she could hear voices slapping against each other in contention. That conflict pulled her toward it like a moth toward flame.

  Gusts of wind roiled about her as she stepped out over the storm-sill to the afterdeck. The sun was barely discernible beyond the gray wrack which covered the sea, presaging rain somewhere but not here, not this close to the coast of Bhrathairealm and the Great Desert.

  The coast itself was no longer visible. The Giantship was running at an angle northwestward across the froth and chop of the waves; and the canvas gave out muffled retorts, fighting the unreliable winds. Looking around the deck, Linden saw that Pitchwife had indeed been able to repair the side of the vessel and the hole where Foodfendhall had been, making the dromond seaworthy again. He had even contrived to build the starboard remains of the hall into a housing for the galley. Distressed though she was, she felt a pang of untainted gratitude toward the deformed Giant. In his own way, he was a healer.

  But no restoration in his power healed the faint unwieldiness of the way Starfare's Gem moved without its midmast.

  That Sevinhand had been able to outmanoeuvre the warships of the Bhrathair was astonishi
ng. The Giantship had become like Covenant's right hand, incomplete and imprecise.

  Yet Covenant stood angrily near the centre of the afterdeck as if he belonged there, as if he had the right. On one side were the First and Pitchwife; on the other, Brinn and Cail. They had fallen silent as Linden came on deck. Their faces were turned toward her, and she saw in their expressions that she was the subject of their contention.

  Covenant's shirt still bore the black hand-smears of hustin blood with which she had stained him in the forecourt of the First Circinate.

  Behind her, Honninscrave's voice arose at intervals from the wheeldeck, commanding the Giantship. Because Foodfendhall no longer blocked her view forward, she was able to see that Findail had resumed his place in the prow. But Vain remained standing where his feet had first touched the deck when he had climbed aboard.

  Seadreamer was nowhere to be seen. Linden found that she missed him. He might have been willing to take her part.

  Stiffly, she advanced. Her face was set and hard because she feared that she was going to weep. The wind fluttered her long-unwashed hair against her cheeks. Under other circumstances, she would have loathed that dirt. She had a doctor's instinct for cleanliness; and a part of her had always taken pride in the sheen of her hair. But now she accepted her grimy appearance in the same spirit that she displayed the dark stains on her thighs. It, too, was just.

  Abruptly, Pitchwife began to speak. “Chosen,” he said as if he were feverish, “Covenant Giantfriend has described to us his encounter with Kasreyn of the Gyre. That tale comes well caparisoned with questions, which the Appointed might answer if he chose-or if he were potently persuaded. He perceives some unhermeneuticable peril in-”

  Brinn interrupted the Giant flatly. His voice held no inflection, but he wielded it with the efficacy of a whip. “And Cail has spoken to the ur-Lord concerning the death of Ceer. He has related the manner in which you sought Ceer's end.”