The One Tree
Page 24
As she was brought near Covenant, his presence gave her a false energy. She took hold of the arm Seadreamer extended toward her, moved like brachiation from him to Brinn and the railing. Then she huddled beside Covenant and at once began to explore him for injuries or deterioration.
He was nearly as wet as she, and automatic shivers ran through him like an ague in the marrow of his bones. But in other ways he was as well as the Elohim had left him. His eyes stared as if they had lost the capability of focus; his mouth hung open; water bedraggled his beard. When she examined him, he repeated his warning almost inaudibly against the background of the wind. But the words meant nothing to him.
Weakened by relief and pain, she sagged at his side.
The First and Pitchwife were nearby, watching for her verdict on Covenant’s state. Linden shook her head; and Pitchwife winced. But the First said nothing. She held herself as if the absence of any bearable foe cramped her muscles. She was a trained warrior; but the Giantship’s survival depended on sea-craft, not swords. Linden met the First’s gaze and nodded. She knew how the Swordmain felt.
Looking around the dromond, she was appalled to see that Galewrath still stood at Shipsheartthew. Locked between the stone spokes of the wheel and the deck, the Storesmaster held her place with the stolid intransigence of a statue. At first, Linden did not understand why Galewrath stayed in a place of such exposure and strain—or why the Master allowed anyone to remain there. But then her thinking clarified. The dromond still needed its rudder to maintain its precarious balance. In addition, if the wind shifted forward Galewrath might be able to turn Starfare’s Gem perpendicular to the blast again; for the Giantship would surely sink if any change sent its prow even slightly into the wind. And if the gale shifted aft, she might have a chance to turn away. With the storm at its back, Starfare’s Gem might be able to rise and run.
Linden did not know how even a Giant’s thews could stand the strain Galewrath endured. But the blunt woman clung like hard hope to her task and did not let go.
At last, Honninscrave finished setting his lifelines. Swarming from cable to cable, he climbed to join the First and Pitchwife near Linden. As he moved, he shouted encouragements and jests to the hunched shapes of his crew. Pitchwife had described him accurately: he was in his element. His oaken shoulders bore the dromond’s plight as if the burden were light to him.
Reaching Linden’s proximity, he called, “Be not daunted, Chosen! Starfare’s Gem will yet redeem us from this storm!”
She was no match for him. His fortitude only underscored her apprehension. Her voice nearly broke as she returned, “How many have we lost?”
“Lost?” His reply pierced the blind ferocity of the hurricane. “None! Your forewarning prepared us! All are here! Those you see not I have sent to the pumps!” As he spoke, Linden became aware that bursts of water were slashing away from the side of the ship above her, boiling into mist and darkness as the wind tore them from the pumpholes. “Those to port we cannot employ. But those to starboard we have linked across the holds. Sevinhand, who commands below, reports that his crew keeps pace. We endure, Chosen! We will survive!”
She groped for a share of his faith and could not find it. “Maybe we should abandon ship!”
He gaped at her. She heard the folly of her words before he responded, “Do you wish to chance this sea in a longboat?”
Helplessly she asked, “What’re you going to do?”
“Naught!” he returned in a shout like a challenge. “While this gale holds, we are too precarious. But when the change comes, as come it must—Then perhaps you will see that the Giants are sailors—and Starfare’s Gem, a ship—to make the heart proud!
“Until that time, hold faith! Stone and Sea, do you not comprehend that we are alive?”
But she was no longer listening to him. The imponderable screech and yowl of the blast seemed to strike straight at Covenant. He was shivering with cold. His need was poignant to her; but she did not know how to touch him. Her hands were useless, so deeply chilled that she could hardly curl them into fists. Slow blood oozed from several abrasions on her palms, formed in viscid drops between her fingers. She paid no attention to it.
Later, large bowls of diamondraught were passed among the companions. The Giantish liquor reduced her weakness somewhat, enabling her to go on clinging for her life. But still she did not raise her head. She could not think why Vain had saved her. The force of the storm felt like an act of malice. Surely if the Demondim-spawn had not saved her the blast would have been appeased.
Her health-sense insisted that the hurricane was a natural one, not a manifestation of deliberate evil. But she was so badly battered by the wind’s violence and the cold, so eroded by her fear, that she no longer knew the difference.
They were all going to die, and she had not yet found a way to give Covenant back his mind.
Later still, night effaced the last illumination. The gale did not abate; it appeared to have blown out the stars. Nothing but a few weak lanterns—one near Galewrath, the rest scattered along the upper edge of the afterdeck—reduced the blackness. The wind went on reaping across the sea with a sound as shrill as a scythe. Through the stone came the groaning of the masts as they protested against their moorings, the repetitive thud and pound of the pumps. All the crewmembers took turns below, but their best efforts were barely enough to keep pace with the water. They could not lessen the great salt weight which held Starfare’s Gem on its side. More diamondraught was passed around. The day had seemed interminable. Linden did not know how she could face the night and stay sane.
By degrees, her companions sank into themselves as she did. Dismay covered them like the night, soaked into them like the cold. If the wind shifted now, Galewrath would have no forewarning. In the distant light of her lantern, she looked as immobile as stone, no longer capable of the reactions upon which the dromond might depend. Yet Honninscrave sent no one to relieve her: any brief uncertainty while Shipsheartthew changed hands might cause the vessel to founder. And so the Giants who were not at the pumps had no other way to fight for their lives except to cling and shiver. Eventually even the Master’s chaffering could not rouse them to hope or spirit. They crouched against the rail, with the black sea running almost directly below them, and waited like men and women who had been sentenced to death.
But Honninscrave did not leave them alone. When his guyings and jollyings became ineffective, he shouted unexpectedly, “Ho, Pitchwife! The somnolence of these Giants abashes me! In days to come, they will hang their heads to hear such a tale told of them! Grant us a song to lift our hearts, that we may remember who we are!”
From a place near her, Linden heard the First mutter mordantly, “Aye, Pitchwife. Grant them a song. When those who are whole falter, those who are halt must bear them up.”
But Pitchwife did not appear to hear her. “Master!” he replied to Honninscrave with a frantic laugh, “I have been meditating such a song! It may not be kept silent, for it swells in my heart, becoming too great for any breast to contain! Behold!” With a lugubrious stagger, he let himself fall down the deck. When he hit the first lifeline, it thrummed under his weight, but held. Half-reclining against the line, he faced upward. “It will boon me to sing this song for you!”
Shadows cast by the lanterns made his misshapen face into a grimace. But his grin was unmistakable; and as he continued his humor became less forced.
“I will sing the song which Bahgoon sang, in the aftermath of his taming by his spouse and harridan, that many-legended odalisque Thelma Twofist!”
The power of his personal mirth drew a scattering of wan cheers and ripostes from the despondent Giants.
Striking a pose of exaggerated melancholy, he began. He did not actually sing; he could not make a singing voice audible. But he delivered his verses in a pitched rhythmic shout which affected his listeners like music.
“My love has eyes which do not glow:
Her loveliness is somewhat formed askew,
And pouting lips o’er teeth not in a row.
“Her limbs are doughtier than mine,
And what I do not please to give she takes.
Her hair were better kempt with hoes and rakes.
Her kiss tastes less of diamondraught than brine.
“Her odorescence gives me ill:
Her converse is by wit or grace unlit:
Her raiment would become her if it fit.
So think of me with rue: I love her still.”
It was a lengthy song; but after a moment Linden was distracted from it. Faintly she heard the First murmuring to herself, clearly unaware that anyone could hear her.
“Therefore do I love you, Pitchwife,” she said into the wind and the night. “In sooth, this is a gift to lift the heart. Husband, it shames me that I do not equal your grace.”
In a beneficial way, the deformed Giant seemed to shame all the crew. To answer his example, they stirred from their disconsolation, responded to each other as if they were coming back to life. Some of them were laughing; others straightened their backs, tightened their grips on the railing, as if by so doing they could better hear the song.
Instinctively Linden roused herself with them. Their quickening emanations urged her to shrug off some of her numbness.
But when she did so, her percipience began to shout at her. Behind the restoration of the Giants rose a sense of peril. Something was approaching the Giantship—something malefic and fatal.
It had nothing to do with the storm. The storm was not evil. This was.
“Chosen?” Cail asked.
Distinctly Covenant said, “Don’t touch me.”
She tried to rise to her feet. Only Cail’s swift intervention kept her from tumbling toward Pitchwife.
“Jesus!” She hardly heard herself. The darkness and the gale deafened her. “It’s going to attack us here!”
The First swung toward her. “Attack us?”
As Linden cried out, “That Raver!” the assault began.
Scores of long dark shapes seethed out of the water below the aftermast. They broke through the reflections of the lanterns, started to wriggle up the steep stone.
As they squirmed upward, they took light. The air seemed to ignite them in fiery red.
Burning with crimson internal heat like fire-serpents, they attacked the deck, swarming toward Covenant and Linden.
Eels!
Immense numbers of them.
They were not on fire, shed no flame. Rather they radiated a hot red malice from their snakelike forms. Driven by the lust of the Raver in them, they shone like incandescent blood as they climbed. They were as large as Linden’s arm. Their gaping teeth flashed light as incisive as razors.
The First yelled a warning that fled without echo into the wind.
The leading eels reached the level of the mast; but Linden could not move. The sheer force of the Raver’s presence held her. Memories of Gibbon and Marid burned in her guts; and a black yearning answered, jumping within her like wild glee. Power! The part of her that desired possession and Ravers, lusted for the sovereign strength of death, lashed against her conscious loathing, her vulnerable and deliberate rejection of evil; and the contradiction locked her into immobility. She had been like this in the woods behind Haven Farm, when Lord Foul had looked out of the fire at her and she had let Covenant go down alone to his doom.
Yet that threat to him had finally broken her fear, sent her running to his rescue. And the eels were coming for him now, while he was entirely unable to defend himself. Stung by his peril, her mind seemed to step back, fleeing from panic into her old professional detachment.
Why had Foul chosen to attack now, when the Elohim had already done Covenant such harm? Had the Elohim acted for reasons of their own, without the Despiser’s knowledge or prompting? Had she been wrong in her judgment of them? If Lord Foul did not know about Covenant’s condition—
Hergrom, Ceer, and the First had already started downward to meet the attack; but Pitchwife was closer to it than anyone else. Quickly he slipped below his lifeline to the next cable. Bracing himself there, he bent and scooped up an eel to crush it.
As his hand closed, a discharge of red power shot through him. The blast etched him, distinct and crimson, against the dark sea. With a scream in his chest, he tumbled down the deck, struck heavily against the base of the mast. Sprawled precariously there, he lay motionless, barely breathing.
More eels crawled over his legs. But since he was still, they did not unleash their fire into him.
Hergrom slid in a long dive down to the stricken Giant. At once, he kicked three eels away from Pitchwife’s legs. The creatures fell writhing back into the sea; but their power detonated on Hergrom’s foot, sent him into convulsions. Only the brevity of the blast saved his life. He retained scarcely enough control over his muscles to knot one fist in the back of Pitchwife’s sark, the other on a cleat of the mast. Twitching and jerking like a wild man, he still contrived to keep himself and Pitchwife from sliding farther.
Every spasm threatened to bring either him or the Giant into contact with more of the creatures.
Then the First reached the level of the assault. With her feet planted on the deck, a lifeline across her belly, she poised her broadsword in both fists. Her back and shoulders bunched like a shout of fear and rage for Pitchwife.
The First’s jeopardy snatched Linden back from her detachment. Desperately she howled, “No!”
She was too late. The First scythed her blade at the eels closest to her feet.
Power shot along the iron, erupted from her hands into her chest. Fire formed a corona around her. Red static sprang from her hair. Her sword fell. Plunging in a shower of sparks, it struck the water with a sharp hiss and disappeared.
She made no effort to catch it. Her stunned body toppled over the lifeline. Below her, the water seethed with malice as more eels squirmed up the deck into air and fire.
Ceer barely caught her. Reading the situation with celerity bordering on prescience, he had taken an instant to knot a rope around his waist. As the First fell, he threw the rope to the nearest crewmember and sprang after her.
He snagged her by the shoulder. Then the Giant pulled on the rope, halting Ceer and the First just above the waterline.
“Don’t move them!” Linden shouted instantly. “She can’t take any more!”
The First lay still. Ceer held himself motionless. The eels crawled over them as if they were a part of the deck.
With a fierce effort, Hergrom fought himself under command. He steadied his limbs, stopped jerking Pitchwife, a heartbeat before more eels began slithering over the two of them.
Linden could hardly think. Her friends were in danger. Memories of Revelstone and Gibbon pounded at her. The presence of the Raver hurt her senses, appalled every inch of her flesh. In Revelstone, the conflict of her reactions to that ill power had driven her deep into a catatonia of horror. But now she let the taste of evil pour through her and fought to concentrate on the creatures themselves. She needed a way to combat them.
Seadreamer’s reflexes were swifter. Tearing Covenant from Brinn’s grasp, he leaped down to the first cable, then began hauling himself toward Foodfendhall.
Brinn went after him as if to retrieve the ur-Lord from a Giant who had gone mad.
But almost immediately Seadreamer’s purpose became clear. As the Giant conveyed Covenant forward, the eels turned in that direction, writhing to catch up with their prey. The whole thrust of the attack shifted forward.
Soon Ceer and the First were left behind. And a moment later Pitchwife and Hergrom were out of danger.
At once, the Giant holding Ceer’s rope heaved the Haruchai and the First upward. Honninscrave skidded under the lifelines to the mast, took Pitchwife from Hergrom’s damaged grasp.
But the eels still came, Raver-driven to hurl themselves at Covenant. Shortly Seadreamer had traversed the cable to its mooring near the
rail at the edge of Foodfendhall. There he hesitated, looked back at the pursuit. But he had no choice. He had committed himself, was cornered now between the housing and the rail. The nearest creatures were scant moments from his feet.
As Brinn caught up with him, Seadreamer grabbed the Haruchai by the arm, pulled him off his feet in a deft arc up to the canted roof. He landed just within the ship’s lee below the mad gale. Almost in the same motion, Seadreamer planted one foot atop the railing and leaped after Brinn.
For an instant, the wind caught him, tried to hurl him out to sea. But his weight and momentum bore him back down to the roof. Beyond the edge of Foodfendhall, he dropped out of Linden’s view. Then he appeared again as he stretched out along the midmast. He held Covenant draped over his shoulder.
In spite of the fearsome risks he took, Linden’s courage lifted. Perhaps the wall of the housing would block the eels.
But the creatures had not been daunted by the steep slope of the deck; and now they began to squirm up the side of Foodfendhall, clinging to the flat stone with their bellies. As their fire rose, it came between her and the darkness at the mast, effacing Seadreamer and Covenant from her sight.
At Honninscrave’s command, several Giants moved to engage the eels. They fought by using lengths of hawser as whips—and had some success. Discharges of power expended themselves by incinerating the ropes, did not reach the hands of the Giants. Many eels were killed by the force of the blows.
But the creatures were too numerous; and the Giants were slowed by their constant need for more rope. They could not clear their way to the wall, could not prevent scores of fire-serpents from scaling upward. And more eels came surging incessantly out of the sea. Soon Seadreamer would be trapped. Already creatures were wriggling onto the roof.