The One Tree

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Possession is evil.”

  Was it true after all that the Elohim were evil?

  Infelice cocked an eyebrow in disdain, but did not reply.

  “Linden.” Covenant’s voice was gripped like a bit between his teeth. His hands reached out to her, turned her to face him again. “I don’t care whether we can trust them or not. We have got to know where the One Tree is. If they have something else in mind—” He grimaced acidly. “They think I don’t count. How much of that do you think I can stand? After what I’ve been through?” His tone said clearly that he could not stand it at all. “I saved the Land once, and I’ll do it again. They are not going to take that away from me.”

  As she recognized his emotions, she went numb inside. Too much of his anger was directed at her—at the idea that she was the Sun-Sage, that he was to be blamed for affirming himself. The bells were within her range now, but she hardly listened to them. It was happening again, everything was happening again, there was nothing she could do, it would always happen. She was as useless to him as she had been to either of her parents. And she was going to lose him. She could not even say to him, I don’t have the power. Don’t you understand that the reason I won’t go into you is to protect you? Instead she let the frozen place in her heart speak.

  “You’re just doing this because you feel insulted. It’s like your leprosy. You think you can get even by sacrificing yourself. The universal victim.” You never loved me anyway. “It’s the only way you know how to live.”

  She saw that she had hurt him—and that the pain made no difference. The more she reviled him, the more adamant he became. The hot mute glare with which he answered her rendered him untouchable. In his own terms, he had no choice. How could he rise above his plight, except by meeting it squarely and risking himself against it? When he turned his back on her to accept Infelice’s offer, she did not try to stop him. Her numbness might as well have been grief.

  “Covenant Giantfriend,” the First demanded. “Be wary of what you do. I have given the Search into your hands. It must not be lost.”

  He ignored her. Facing Infelice, he muttered in a brittle voice, “I’m ready. Let’s get on with it.”

  A bell rang across the eftmound—a clamor of appeal or protest. Now Linden was able to identify its source. It came from Findail.

  —Infelice, consider! It is my life you hazard. If this path fails, I must bear the cost. Is there no other way?

  And once again Infelice surprised Linden. “Sun-Sage,” the Elohim said as if she were denying herself, “what is your word? In your name, I will refuse him if you wish it.” Covenant hissed like a curse; but Infelice was not done discounting him. She went on inflexibly, “However, the onus will be upon your head. You must make promise that you will take his ring from him ere he brings the Earth to ruin—that you will make ring-wielder and Sun-Sage one in yourself.” Covenant radiated a desperate outrage which Infelice did not deign to notice. “If you will not bind yourself to that promise, I must meet his request.”

  Stiffly Findail chimed:

  —Infelice, I thank you.

  But Linden had no way of knowing what Findail meant. She was reeling inwardly at the import of Infelice’s proposal. This was a more insidious temptation than possession: it offered her power without exposing her to the threat of darkness. To accept responsibility for him? No, more than that: to accept responsibility for the whole quest, for the survival of the Earth and the defeat of Lord Foul. Here was her chance to protect Covenant from himself—to spare him in the same way he had so often striven to spare her.

  But then she saw the hidden snare. If she accepted, the quest would have no way to find the One Tree. Unless she did what she had just refused to do—unless she violated him to pry out Caer-Caveral’s secret knowledge. Everything came back to that. The strength of her buried yearning for that kind of power made her feel sick. But she had already rejected it, had spent her life rejecting it.

  She shook her head. Dully she said, “I can’t tell him what to do”—and tried to believe that she was affirming something, asserting herself and him against temptation. But every word she spoke sounded like another denial. The thought of his peril wrung her heart. “Let him make his own decisions.”

  Then she had to wrap her arms around her chest to protect herself against the force of Covenant’s relief, Findail’s clanging dismay, the apprehension of her friends—and against Infelice’s eager radiance.

  “Come,” the diamond-clad Elohim said at once, “Let us begin.”

  And her inner voice added:

  —Let him be taken by the silence, as we have purposed.

  Involuntarily Linden turned, saw Covenant and Infelice focused on each other as if they were transfixed. She wore her gleaming like the outward sign of a cunning victory. And he stood with his shoulders squared and his head raised, braced on the crux of his circinate doom. If he had paused to smile, Linden would have screamed.

  With a slow flourish of her raiment like a billowing of jewels, Infelice descended from the hillcrest. Her power became her as if she had been born for it. Flowing like the grateful breeze of evening, she moved to stand before Covenant.

  When she placed her hand on his forehead, the silent air of the eftmound was shredded with anguish.

  A shriek as shrill as fangs clawed through his chest. He plunged to his knees. Every muscle in his face and neck knotted. His hands leaped at his temples as if his skull were being torn apart. Convulsions made him pummel the sides of his head helplessly.

  Almost as one. Linden and the Giants surged toward him.

  Before they could reach him, his outcry became a scream of wild magic. White flame blasted in all directions. Infelice recoiled. The rock of the eftmound reeled. Linden and Pitchwife fell. Scores of the Elohim took other shapes to protect themselves. The First snatched out her glaive as if her balance depended on it. She was shouting furiously at Infelice; but amid the roar of Covenant’s power her voice made no sound.

  Struggling to her hands and knees, Linden saw a sight that seemed to freeze the blood in her veins.

  This conflagration was like no other she had ever witnessed. It did not come from his ring, from his half-fist pounding at his temple. It sprang straight from his forehead as if his brain had erupted in argence.

  At first, the blaze spewed and flailed on every hand, scourging mad pain across the hill. But then the air became a tumult of bells, ringing in invocation, shaping the purpose of the Elohim; and the fire began to change. Slowly it altered to a hot shining, as hard and white as all agony fused together.

  Instinctively Linden shielded her eyes. Such brilliance should have blinded her. But it did not. Though it beat against her face as if she were staring into the furnace of the sun, it remained bearable.

  And within its clear core, visions were born.

  One after another, they emerged through the radiance.

  A young girl, a child in a blue dress, perhaps four or five years old, stood with her back pressed against the black trunk of a tree. Though she made no sound, she was wailing in unmasked terror at a timber-rattler near her bare legs.

  Then the snake was gone, leaving two fatal red marks on the pale flesh of the child’s shin.

  Covenant staggered into the vision. He looked battered and abused from head to foot. Blood ran from an untended cut on his lips, from his forehead. He took the girl into his arms, tried to comfort her. They spoke to each other, but the vision was mute. Fumbling, he produced a penknife, opened it. With the lace of one of his boots, he made a tourniquet. Then he steadied the girl in his embrace, poised his knife over her violated shin.

  With the movement of the knife, the vision changed. First one, then the other, blades slashed his wrists, drawing lines of death. Blood ran. He knelt in a pool of passion while Riders swung their rukhs and drove him helpless and vermeil into the soothtell.

  A chaos of images followed. Linden saw the Land sprawling broken under the Sunbane. From the deluge of the sun of rain,
the stricken ground merged into a desert; then the desert was leeched into the red suppuration of the sun of pestilence. At the same time, all these things were happening to Joan’s flesh as she lay possessed and bound on her bed in Covenant’s house. She was wracked through every form of disease until Linden nearly went mad at the sight.

  The vision quivered with rage and revulsion, and wild magic appeared. Acute incandescence flamed like one white torch among the blood-lit rukhs. It bent itself to his slashed wrists, staunching the flow, sealing the wounds. Then he rose to his feet, borne erect by fury and conflagration, and his power went reaving among the Riders, slaying them like sheaves.

  But as the white flame mounted toward concussion, the essence of its light changed, softened. Covenant stood on the surface of a lake, and its waters burned in a gyre before him, lifting the krill into his hands. The lake upheld him like a benison, changing his savagery to the light of hope; for there was Earthpower yet within the Land, and this one lake if no other still sustained itself against the Sunbane.

  Again the fire changed. Now it streamed away in rills of phosphorescence from the tall figure of a man. He was robed all in whitest sendaline. In his hand, he held a gnarled tree-limb as a staff. He bore himself with dignity and strength; but behind its grave devotion, his face had neither eyes nor eye-sockets.

  As he addressed Covenant, other figures appeared. A blue-robed man with a crooked smile and serene eyes. A woman similarly clad, whose passionate features conveyed hints of love and hate. A man like Call and Brinn, as poised and capable as judgment. And a Giant, who must have been Saltheart Foamfollower.

  Covenant’s Dead.

  With them stood Vain, wearing his black perfection like a cloak to conceal his heart.

  The figures spoke to Covenant through the mute vision. The blessing and curse of their affection bore him to his knees. Then the eyeless man, the Forestal, approached. Carefully he stretched out his staff to touch Covenant’s forehead.

  Instantly a blaze like a melody of flame sang out over the eftmound; and at once all Elemesnedene fell into darkness. Night arched within the vision—a night made explicit and familiar by stars. Slowly the mapwork of the stars began to turn.

  “See you, Honninscrave?” cried the First hoarsely.

  “Yes!” he responded. “This path I can follow to the ends of the Earth.”

  For a time, the stars articulated the way to the One Tree. Then, in the place they had defined, the vision dropped toward the sea. Amid the waves, an isle appeared. It was small and barren, standing like a cairn against the battery of the Sea, marking nothing. No sign of any life relieved the desolation of its rocky sides. Yet the intent of the vision was clear: this was the location of the One Tree.

  Over the ocean rose a lorn wail. Covenant cried out as if he had caught a glimpse of his doom.

  The sound tore through Linden. She struggled to her feet, tried to thrust her scant strength forward. Covenant knelt with the power blazing from his forehead as if he were being crucified by nails of brain-fire.

  For a moment, she could not advance against the light: it held her back like a palpable current pouring from him. But then the bells rang out in unison:

  —It is accomplished!

  Some of them were savage with victory. Others expressed a deep rue.

  At the same time, the vision began to fade from its consummation on the sea-bitten isle. The brilliance macerated by degrees, restoring the natural illumination of Elemesnedene, allowing Linden to advance. Step after step, she strove her way to Covenant. Vestiges of vision seemed to burn across her skin, crackle like lightning in her hair; but she fought through them. As the power frayed away to its end, leaving the atmosphere as stunned and still as a wasteland, she dropped to the ground in front of the Unbeliever.

  He knelt in a slack posture, resting back on his heels with his arms unconsciously braced on his knees. He seemed unaware of anything. His gaze stared through her like a blind man’s. His mouth hung open as if he had been bereft of every word or wail. His breathing shook slightly, painfully. The muscles of his chest ached in Linden’s sight as if they had been torn on the rack of Infelice’s opening.

  But when she reached out her hand to him, he croaked like a parched and damaged raven, “Don’t touch me.”

  The words were clear. They echoed the old warning of his leprosy for all the Elohim to hear. But in his eyes the light of his mind had gone out.

  PART II: Betrayal

  TEN: Escape from Elohim

  The bells were clear to Linden now; but she no longer cared what they were saying. She was locked to Covenant’s vacant eyes, his slack, staring face. If he could see her at all, the sight had no meaning to him. He did not react when she took hold of his head, thrust her horrified gaze at him.

  The Giants were clamoring to know what had happened to him. She ignored them. Desperately marshaling her percipience, she tried to penetrate the flat emptiness of his orbs, reach his mind. But she failed: within his head, her vision vanished into darkness. He was like a snuffed candle, and the only smoke curling up from the extinguished wick was his old clenched stricture:

  “Don’t touch me.”

  She began to founder in that dark. Something of him must have remained sentient, otherwise he could not have continued to articulate his self-despite. But that relict of his consciousness was beyond her grasp. The darkness seemed to leech away her own light. She was falling into an emptiness as eternal and hungry as the cold void between the stars.

  Savagely she tore herself out of him.

  Honninscrave and Seadreamer stood with the First at Covenant’s back. Pitchwife knelt beside Linden, his huge hands cupping her shoulders in appeal. “Chosen.” His whisper ached among the trailing wisps of dark. “Linden Avery. Speak to us.”

  She was panting in rough heaves. She could not find enough air. The featureless light of Elemesnedene suffocated her. The Elohim loomed claustrophobically around her, as unscrupulous as ur-viles. “You planned this,” she grated between gasps. “This is what you wanted all along.” She was giddy with extremity. “To destroy him.”

  The First drew a sharp breath. Pitchwife’s hands tightened involuntarily. Wincing to his feet as if he needed to meet his surprise upright, he lifted Linden erect. Honninscrave gaped at her. Seadreamer stood with his arms rigid at his sides, restraining himself from vision.

  “Enough,” responded Infelice. Her tone was peremptory ice. “I will submit no longer to the affront of such false judgment. The Elohimfest has ended.” She turned away.

  “Stop!” Without Pitchwife’s support, Linden would have fallen like pleading to the bare ground. All her remaining strength went into her voice. “You’ve got to restore him! Goddamn it, you can’t leave him like this!”

  Infelice paused, but did not look back. “We are the Elohim. Our choices lie beyond your questioning. Be content.” Gracefully she continued down the hillside.

  Seadreamer broke into motion, hurled himself after her. The First and Honninscrave shouted, but could not halt him. Bereft of his wan, brief hope, he had no other outlet for his pain.

  But Infelice heard or sensed his approach. Before he reached her, she snapped, “Hold, Giant!”

  He rebounded as if he had struck an invisible wall at her back. The force of her command sent him sprawling.

  With stately indignation, she faced him. He lay groveling on his chest; but his lips were violent across his teeth, and his eyes screamed at her.

  “Assail me not with your mistrust,” she articulated slowly, “lest I teach you that your voiceless Earth-Sight is honey and benison beside the ire of Elemesnedene.”

  “No.” By degrees, life was returning to Linden’s limbs; but still she needed Pitchwife’s support. “If you want to threaten somebody, threaten me. I’m the one who accuses you.”

  Infelice looked at her without speaking.

  “You planned all this,” Linden went on. “You demeaned him, dismissed him, insulted him—to make him angry enough so th
at he would let you into him and dare you to hurt him. And then you wiped out his mind. Now”—she gathered every shred of her vehemence—“restore it!”

  “Sun-Sage,” Infelice said in a tone of glacial scorn, “you mock yourself and are blind to it.” Moving disdainfully, she left the eftmound and passed through the ring of dead trees.

  On all sides, the other Elohim also turned away, dispersing as if Linden and her companions held no more interest for them.

  With an inchoate cry, Linden swung toward Covenant. For one wild instant, she intended to grab his ring, use it to coerce the Elohim.

  The sight of him stopped her. The First had raised him to his feet. He stared through Linden as though she and everything about her had ceased to exist for him; but his empty refrain sounded like an unintentional appeal.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Oh, Covenant! Of course she could not take his ring. She could not do that to him, if for no other reason than because it was what the Elohim wanted. Or part of what they wanted. She ached in protest, but her resolve had frayed away into uselessness again. A surge of weeping rose up in her; she barely held it back. What have they done to you?

  “Is it sooth?” the First whispered to the ambiguous sky. “Have we gained this knowledge at such a cost to him?”

  Linden nodded dumbly. Her hands made fumbling gestures. She had trained them to be a physician’s hands, and now she could hardly contain the yearning to strangle. Covenant had been taken from her as surely as if he had been slain—murdered like Nassic by a blade still hot with cruelty. She felt that if she did not move, act, stand up for herself somehow, she would go mad.

  Around her, the Giants remained still as if they had been immobilized by her dismay. Or by the loss of Covenant, of his determination. No one else could restore the purpose of the quest.