The One Tree

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  With a cry that seemed to tear her throat, she told Honninscrave what she saw.

  Her news staggered him. He had never had a chance to see the hurricane. The first storm had taken hold of the Giantship before it entered the range of the second. Disaster loomed along the heading he had chosen. But he recovered swiftly. He was the Master of Starfare’s Gem in every nerve and sinew. He sounded ready for any peril or mischance as he shouted, “What is your counsel?”

  Gritting herself, she tried to think—gauge the intersecting paths of the storms, estimate the effect they would have on each other. She was not adept at such visualizations. She was trained to map the insidious cunning of diseases, not the candid fury of gales. But she read them as best she could.

  “If we keep on this way!” Her chest ached at the strain of yelling. “We might be able to pass the one in the south! Or the worst of it! Before we get too far into the other one!”

  Honninscrave nodded his approval. The abutment of his forehead seemed proof against any storm.

  “But the other one!” She concluded as if she were screaming. “It’s terrible! If you have to choose, go south!”

  “I hear you!” His shout was flayed into spray and tatters. He had already turned to hurl his orders across the wind.

  His commands sounded as mad as the gale. Linden felt the hurricane ravening closer, always closer. Surely no vessel—especially one as heavy as the dromond—could withstand that kind of fury. The wind was a shriek in the ratlines. She could see the masts swaying. The yards appeared to waver like outstretched arms groping for balance. The deck kicked and lurched. If Galewrath did not weaken, the rudder might snap, leaving Starfare’s Gem at the mercy of the hungry seas. While Linden hesitated, the last sail left on the aftermast sprang suddenly into shreds and was gone, torn thread from thread. Its gear lashed the air. Instinctively she ducked her head, pressed herself against Cail’s support.

  Yelling like ecstasy, Honninscrave sent Giants to replace the lost canvas.

  Linden pulled her face to the side of Cail’s head, shouted, “Take me forward! I’ve got an idea!”

  He nodded his understanding and at once began to haul her toward a stairway, choosing the windward side rather than the lee to keep as much of the tilted deck as possible between her and the seething rush of the sea.

  As they reached the stairs, she saw several Giants—Pitchwife and others—hastening across the afterdeck, accompanied by Ceer and Hergrom. They were stringing lifelines. When she and Cail gained the foot of the stairs, Pitchwife and Ceer came slogging to join them. Blinking the spray from his eyes, Pitchwife gave her a grin. With a gesture toward the wheeldeck, he shouted like a laugh, “Our Honninscrave is in his element, think you not?” Then he ascended the stairs to join his wife and the Master.

  Linden’s clothes were soaked. Her shirt stuck to her skin. Every gobbet of water the seas hurled at her seemed to slap into her bones. She had already begun to shiver. But the cold felt detached, impersonal, as if she were no longer fully inhabiting her body; and she ignored it.

  Then rain gushed out of the clouds. It filled the air as if every wavecap had become foam, boiling up to put teeth into the wind. The ocean appeared to shrink around Starfare’s Gem, blinding all the horizons. Linden could barely see as far as Foodfendhall. She spat curses, but the loud rain deafened her to her own voice. With so little visibility, how would Honninscrave know when to turn from the approaching hurricane?

  She struggled to the nearest lifeline, locked her fingers around it, then started to pull her way forward.

  She had an idea. But it might have been sane or mad. The gale rent away all distinctions.

  The afterdeck seemed as long as a battlefield. Spray and rain sent sheets of water pouring against her ankles, nearly sweeping her down the deck. At every plunge of the Giantship, she shivered like an echo of the tremors which ran along the dromond’s keel. The lifeline felt raw with cold, abrading her palms. Yet she strove forward. She had failed at everything else. She could not bear to think that this simple task might prove beyond her strength.

  Ceer went ahead to open the door of the housing. Riding an eddy of the storm, she pitched over the sill, stumbled to the floor. The two Haruchai slammed the door; and at once the air tensed as if pressure were building toward an explosion in Foodfendhall, aggravated by the yammer and crash outside. For a moment of panic, she thought she heard pieces of the ship breaking away. But as she regained her breath, she realized that she was hearing the protestations of the midmast.

  In the lantern-light, the shaft of the mast was plain before her, marked by engravings she had never studied. Perhaps they revealed the story of Starfare’s Gem’s making, or of its journeys. She did not know. As she worked forward, the groans and creaks rose into a sharp keening. The spars high above her had begun to sing.

  She nearly fell again when Ceer opened the door, letting the howl strike at her like a condor. But Cail braced her, helped her back out into the blast. At once, the rain crashed down like thunder. She chose a lifeline anchored to the foremast.

  With the cable clamped under one arm so that it upheld her, she lowered her head and went on against the wind.

  A Giant loomed ahead of her, following the lifeline aft. As they reached each other, she recognized Sevinhand. He paused to let her pass, then shouted like an act of comradeship, “Such a storm! Were I less certain of our charting, I would believe that we had blundered unwitting into the Soulbiter!”

  She had no time to reply. Her hands burned with friction and cold. The cable wore at her side like a gall. She had to reach Findail. He alone on Starfare’s Gem had the power to avert the disaster of the advancing hurricane.

  At the foremast she rested briefly, standing so that the wind pressed her to the stone. In that position, the torment of the mast thrummed acutely into her. The granite’s vitality was being stressed mercilessly. For a moment, the sensation filled her with dread. But when she thrust her percipience into the mast, she was reassured. Like Honninscrave, the dromond was equal to this need. Starfare’s Gem might tilt and keen, but it was not about to break.

  Yet the heart of the hurricane was towering toward her like a mountain come to life, a dire colossus striding to stamp the Giantship down to its doom. Clinching a cable which ran in the direction of the prow, she went on.

  As she squinted through sheets of water as binding as cerements, she caught sight of Vain. The Demondim-spawn stood midway between the foremast and the prow, facing forward as if to keep watch on Findail. And he was as rigid as if the heaving surface under him were a stationary platform. Even the wind had no effect upon him. He might have been rooted to the stone.

  Findail became visible for a moment, then disappeared as the Giantship crashed into the trough of the seas and slammed its prow against the next wave. A deluge cut Linden’s legs from under her. She barely kept her grip on the lifeline. Now she could only advance between waves. When Starfare’s Gem lifted its head, she wrestled forward a few steps. When the prow hit the next wave as if the dromond were being snatched into the deeps, she clung where she was and prayed that her grip and the cable would hold.

  But she moved by stages and at last reached the railing. From there, she had only a short way to go.

  The last part was the hardest. She was already quivering with cold and exhaustion; and the Giantship’s giddy motion, throwing her toward and then yanking her away from the sea, left her hoarse with involuntary curses. At every downward crash, the force of the vessel’s struggle hit her. The sheer effort of holding her breath for each inundation threatened to finish her. Several times, she was only saved by the support of Cail’s shoulder.

  Then she gained Findail’s side. He glanced at her between plunges; and the sight of him stunned her. He was not wet. The wind did not ruffle his hair; the rain did not touch him. He emerged from every smash into the waves with dry raiment and clear eyes, as if he had tuned his flesh to a pitch beyond the reach of any violence of weather or sea.

&nb
sp; But his unscathed aspect confirmed her determination. He was a being of pure Earthpower, capable of sparing himself the merest contact with wind and spray. And what was any storm, if not Earthpower in another form—unbridled and savage, but still acting in accordance with the Law of its nature?

  At the impact of the next wave, she ducked her head. The water pounded her, covered her face with her hair. When the dromond lifted again, she loosed one hand from the rail to thrust the sodden strands aside. Then she drove her voice at Findail.

  “Do something! Save us!”

  His pain-lined expression did not alter. He made no attempt to shout; but his words reached her as clearly as if the storm had been stricken dumb.

  “The Elohim do not tamper with the life of the Earth. There is no life without structure. We respect the workings of that structure in every guise.”

  Structure, Linden thought. Law. They are who they are. Their might is matched by their limitations. Starfare’s Gem dove. She clung to the rail for her life. Chaos was death. Energy could not exist without constriction. If the Lawless power of the Sunbane grew too strong, it might unbind the very foundations of the Earth.

  As the deluge swept past her, she tried again.

  “Then tell Honninscrave what to do! Guide him!”

  The Elohim seemed faintly surprised, “Guide—?” But then he shrugged. “Had he inquired, the question would have searched me. In such a case, where would my ethic lie? But it boots nothing now.” The Giantship plunged again; yet Linden could hear him through the tumult of the water and the shrill wind. “The time for such questions is lost.”

  When the prow surfaced, she fought her sight clear and saw what he meant.

  From out of the heart of the hurricane came rushing a wall of water as high as the first spars of the Giantship.

  It was driven by wind—a wind so savage and tremendous that it dwarfed everything else; a wind which turned every upreaching sea to steam, sheared off the crest of every wave, so that the ocean under it mounted and ran like a flow of dark magma.

  Starfare’s Gem lay almost directly athwart the wall.

  Linden stared at it in a seizure of dread. In the last pause before the onslaught, she heard Honninscrave roaring faintly, “Ward!” Then his shout was effaced by the wild stentorian rage of the wind, howling like the combined anguish and ferocity of all the damned.

  As the wall hit, she lunged at Findail, trying to gain his help—or take him with her, she did not know which. The impact of the great wave ended all differences. But her hands seemed to pass through him. She got one last clear look at his face. His eyes were yellow with grief.

  Then the starboard side of the Giantship rose like an orogenic upthrust, and she fell toward the sea.

  She thought that surely she would strike the port rail. She flailed her arms to catch hold of it. But she was pitched past it into the water.

  The sea slammed at her with such force that she did not feel the blow, did not feel the waters close over her.

  At the same moment, something hard snagged her wrist, wrenched her back to the surface. She was already ten or fifteen feet from the ship. Its port edge was submerged; the entire foredeck loomed over her. It stood almost vertically in the water, poised to fall on her, crush her between stone and sea.

  But it did not fall. Somehow Starfare’s Gem remained balanced on its side, with nearly half of its port decks underwater. And Cail did not let her go.

  His right hand held her wrist at the farthest stretch of his arm. His ankles were grasped by Ceer, also fully outstretched.

  Vain anchored the Haruchai. He still stood as if he were rooted to the deck, with his body at right angles to the stone, nearly parallel to the sea. But he had moved down the deck, positioned himself almost at the waterline. At the end of his reach, he held Ceer’s ankles.

  He did not trouble to raise his head to find out if Linden were safe.

  Heaving against the rush of water, Ceer hauled Call closer to the deck; and Cail dragged Linden after him. Together the Haruchai contracted their chain until Cail could grip Vain’s wrist with his free hand. The Demondim-spawn did nothing to ease their task; but when both Cail and Ceer were clinched to him, holding Linden between them, he released Ceer’s ankles. Then the Haruchai bore her up Vain’s back to the deck.

  Braced against his rigid ankles, they gave her a chance to draw breath.

  She had swallowed too much water; she was gagging on salt. A spasm of coughing knotted her guts. But when it loosened, she found that she could breathe more easily than before the great wave struck. Lying on its side, Starfare’s Gem formed a lee against the wind. The turbulence of the blast’s passage pounded the sea beyond the ship, so that the surface frothed and danced frenetically; but the decks themselves lay in a weird calm.

  As she caught her breath, the dromond’s plight struck her like a hand of the gale.

  On every level of her senses, the granite vessel burned with strain. It radiated pain like a wracked animal caught in the unanswerable snare of the blast. From stem to stern, mast-top to keel, all the stone was shrill with stress, tortured by pressures which its makers could not have conceived. Starfare’s Gem had fallen so far onto its side that the tips of its spars nearly touched the water. It lay squarely across the wind; and the wild storm swept it over the ocean with terrifying speed.

  If there had been any waves, the dromond would certainly have foundered; but in that, at least, the vessel was fortunate, for the titanic gale crushed everything into one long flat and seething rush. Yet the Giantship hung only inches from capsizing. Had the great weight of its masts and yards not been counterbalanced by its enormous keel, it would already have plunged to its death.

  In a way, the sheer force of the wind had saved the ship. It had instantly stripped the remaining canvas to ribbons, thus weakening the thrust of its turbulence against the masts. But still the vessel’s poised survival was as fragile as an old bone. Any shift of the dromond’s position in the wind, any rise of the gale or surge of the sea, would be enough to snap that balance. And every increase in the amount of water Starfare’s Gem shipped threatened to drag it down.

  Giants must have been at the pumps; but Linden did not know how they could possibly keep pace with the torrents that poured in through the hatches and ports, the broken doors of Foodfendhall. The wind’s fury howled at the hull as if it meant to chew through the stone to get at her. And that sound, the incisive ululation and shriek of air blasting past the moire-granite, ripped across the grain of her mind like the teeth of a saw. She did not realize that she was grinding her own teeth until the pain began to feel like a wedge driven between the bones of her skull.

  For a terrible moment, the ship’s peril blanked everything else out of her. But then her heart seemed to come alive with a wrench, and implications of panic shot through her. Grabbing at Cail, she cried over the ferocious background of the wind, “Covenant!” His cabin was to port below the wheeldeck. It must be underwater. He would not be able to save himself from the sea as it rushed in through riven hatches, ruptured portholes, doors burst from their moorings. He would sit there, helpless and empty, while he drowned.

  But Cail replied, “Brinn was forewarned! The ur-Lord is safe!”

  Safe! Good Christ! Clinging to that hope, she shouted, “Take me to him!”

  Ceer turned, called a hail up the deck. A moment later, a Giant near the foremast threw down the end of a rope. The two Haruchai caught it, knotted it around Linden’s waist, then gripped it themselves as the Giant drew them all up the steep stone.

  Vain remained where he was as if he were content to watch the sea speeding within arm’s reach of his face. For the present, at least, he had satisfied his purpose. The black rigor of his back said plainly that he cared for nothing else.

  When the Giant had pulled Linden and the Haruchai up to him, he snatched her into a fervid hug. He was Mistweave; and the fear he had felt for her trembled in his thews. Over her shoulder, he shouted praise and thanks to the Har
uchai.

  His Giantish embrace tasted impossibly secure in the gale. But she could not bear to be delayed. The dromond hung on the verge of destruction. “Where’s Covenant?” she yelled.

  Carefully Mistweave set her down, then pointed away aft. “The Master gathers the crew above the aftermast! Covenant Giantfriend is there! I go to assist at the pumps!”

  The Haruchai nodded their comprehension. Mistweave tore himself away, scrambled to a hatch which gave access to the underdecks, and disappeared.

  Holding Linden between them, Cail and Ceer began to move toward Foodfendhall.

  Cautiously navigating the lifelines, they brought her to the upper door. Within the housing, they found that the Giants had strung more cables, enabling them to cross the wreckage to the afterdeck. One lantern still hung at a crazy angle from the midmast, and its wan light revealed the broken litter of tables and benches which lay half-submerged in the lower part of the hall. The destruction seemed like a blow struck at the very heart of the Giants—at their love of communal gathering.

  But the Haruchai did not delay to grieve over the damage. Firmly they bore Linden out to the afterdeck.

  Most of her other shipmates were there, perched in various attitudes along the starboard rail above the mast. Through the clenched twilight, she could see more than a score of Giants, including Pitchwife, the First, Seadreamer, and Honninscrave. Pitchwife shouted a relieved welcome to her; but she hardly heard him. She was hunting for a glimpse of Covenant.

  After a moment, she located the Unbeliever. He was partially hidden by Seadreamer’s protective bulk. Brinn and Hergrom were braced on either side of him; and he hung slack between them as if all his bones had been broken.

  Ceer and Cail took Linden up a lifeline to one of the cables which ran the length of the afterdeck eight or ten paces below the railing, lashed there to permit movement back and forth, and to catch anyone who might fall. In the arrangement of the lines, she recognized Honninscrave’s meticulous concern for his crew, the life of his ship. He was busy directing the placement of more cables so that his people would be enclosed in a network of supports.