The One Tree

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  At first, the recovery seemed swift. The bonds connecting him to his adolescence, then his young manhood, healed themselves in a surge of memory which felt like fire—annealment and cautery in one. And that fire rapidly became the numinous intensity with which he had given himself to writing and marriage. But then his progress slowed. With Joan on Haven Farm, before the publication of his novel and the birth of their son, he had felt that his luminescence was the most profound energy of life. But it had proven itself hollow at the core. His bestseller had been little more than an inane piece of self-congratulation. And his marriage had been destroyed by the blameless crime of leprosy.

  After that, the things he recollected made him writhe.

  His violent and involuntary isolation, his imposed self-loathing, had driven him deep into the special madness of lepers. He had stumbled into the Land as if it were the final summation and crisis of his life. Almost at once, he had raped the first person who befriended him. He had tormented and dismayed people who helped him. Unwittingly he had walked the path Lord Foul marked out for him—had not turned aside from that doom until the consequences of his own actions came back to appall him. And then he might have achieved ruin instead of restitution, had he not been supported at every turn by people like Mhoram and Bannor and Foamfollower, people whose comprehension of love and valor far surpassed his own. Even now, years later, his heart cried out against the harm he had done to the Land, to the people of the Land—against the paucity with which he had finally served them.

  His voice echoed in the dank constriction of the cell. His companions strained toward him as he knelt like abjection on the cold stone. But he had no attention to spare for them.

  And he was not abject. He was wounded, yes; guilty beyond question; crowded with remorse. But his leprosy had given him strength as well as weakness. In the thronehall of Foul’s Creche, confronting the Despiser and the Illearth Stone, he had found the eye of his paradox. Balanced between the contradictions of self-abhorrence and affirmation, of Unbelief and love—acknowledging and refusing the truth of the Despiser—he had come into his power. He felt it within him now, poised like the moment of clarity which lay at the heart of every vertigo. As the gap closed, he resumed himself.

  He tried to blink his eyes free of tears. Once again, Linden had saved him. The only woman he had met in more than eleven years who was not afraid of his illness. For his sake, she had insisted time after time on committing herself to risks, situations, demands she could neither measure nor control. The stone under his hands and knees felt unsteady; but he meant to climb to his feet. He owed her that. He could not imagine the price she must have paid to restore him.

  When he tried to stand, the whole cell lurched. The air was full of distant boomings like the destruction of granite. A fine powder sifted through the torchlight, hinting at cracks in the ceiling. Again the floor shifted. The cell door rang with stress.

  A voice said flatly, “The Sandgorgon comes.” Covenant recognized Brinn’s characteristic dispassion.

  “Thomas Covenant.” No amount of iron self-command could conceal the First’s dismay. “Giantfriend! Has the Chosen slain you? Has she slain us all? The Sandgorgon comes!”

  He was unable to answer her with words. Words had not come back to him yet. Instead he replied by planting his feet widely, lifting himself erect against the visceral trembling of the stone. Then he turned to face the door.

  His ring hung inert on his half-hand. The venom which triggered his wild magic had been quiescent for long days; and he was too recently returned to himself. He could not take hold of his power. Yet he was ready. Linden had provided for this necessity by the same stroke with which she had driven Kasreyn away.

  Findail sprang to Covenant’s side. The Elohim’s distress was as loud as a yell, though he did not shout. “Do not do this.” Urgency etched his words across the trembling. “Will you destroy the Earth?” His limbs strained with suppressed need. “The Sun-Sage lusts for death. Be not such a fool. Give the ring to me.”

  At that, the first embers of Covenant’s old rage warmed toward fire.

  The distant boomings went on as if parts of the Sandhold had begun to collapse; but the peril was much closer. He heard heavy feet slapping the length of the outer corridor at a run.

  Instinctively he flexed his knees for balance and battle.

  The feet reached the door, paused.

  Like a groan through his teeth, Pitchwife said, “Gossamer Glowlimn, I love you.”

  Then the cell door crumpled like a sheet of parchment as Nom hammered down and through it with two stumped arms as mighty as battering rams.

  While metallic screaming echoed in the dungeon, the Sandgorgon stood hunched under the architrave. From the elevation of the doorway, the beast appeared puissant enough to tear the entire Sandhold stone from stone. Its head had no face, no features, betrayed nothing of its feral passion. Yet its attention was centered remorselessly on Covenant.

  Leaping like a roar down into the chamber, the beast charged as if it meant to drive him through the back wall.

  No mortal flesh and bone could have withstood that onslaught. But the Despiser’s venom had only been rendered quiescent by the Elohim. It had not been purged or weakened. And the Sandgorgon itself was a creature of power.

  In the instant before Nom struck, Thomas Covenant became an eruption of white flame.

  Wild magic: keystone of the Arch of Time: power that was not limited or subdued by any Law except the inherent strictures of its wielder. High Lord Mhoram had said like a prophecy of fire, You are the white gold, and Covenant fulfilled those words. Incandescence came upon him. Argent burst from him as if from the heart of a silver furnace.

  At his side, Findail cried in protest, “No!”

  The Sandgorgon crashed into Covenant. Impact and momentum knocked him against the wall. But he hardly felt the attack. He was preserved from pain or damage by white fire, as if that flame had become the outward manifestation of his leprosy, numbing him to the limitations of his mortality. A man with living nerves might have felt the power too acutely to let it mount so high: Covenant had no such restraint. The venom was avid in him. The fang-scars on his forearm shone like the eyes of the Despiser. Almost without thought or volition, he buffered himself against Nom’s assault.

  The Sandgorgon staggered backward.

  Like upright magma, he flowed after it. Nom dealt out blows that would have pulverized monoliths. Native savagery multiplied by centuries of bitter imprisonment hammered at Covenant. But he responded with blasts like the fury of a bayamo. Chunks of granite fell from the ceiling and burst into dust. Cracks webbed the floor. The architrave of the door collapsed, leaving a gap like a wound to the outer corridor. Findail’s protests sounded like the wailing of rocks.

  Covenant continued to advance. The beast refused to retreat farther. He and Nom wrapped arms around each other and embraced like brothers of the same doom.

  The Sandgorgon’s strength was tremendous. It should have been able to crush him like a bundle of rotten twigs. But he was an avatar of flame, and every flare lifted him higher into the ecstasy of venom and rage. He had already become so bright that his companions were blinded. Argence melted and evaporated falling stone, enlarging the dungeon with every hot beat of his heart. He had been so helpless! Now he was savage with the desire to strike back. This Sandgorgon had slain Hergrom, crippled Ceer. And Kasreyn had set that harm in motion. Kasreyn! He had tortured Covenant when Covenant had been utterly unable to defend himself; and only Hergrom’s intervention had saved him from death—or from a possession which would have been worse than death. Fury keened in him; his outrage burned like the wrath of the sun.

  But Nom was not to blame. The beast was cunning, hungry for violence; but it lived and acted only at the whim of Kasreyn’s power. Kasreyn, and again Kasreyn. Images of atrocity whirled through Covenant. Passion made him as unanswerable as a volcano.

  He felt Nom weakening in his arms. Instinctively he lessened his own
force. The poison in him was newly awakened, and he could still restrain it. He did not want to kill.

  At once, the Sandgorgon put out a new surge of strength that almost tore him in half.

  But Covenant was too far gone in power to fail. With wild magic, he gripped the beast, bound it in fetters of flame and will. It struggled titanically, but without success. Clenching it, he extricated himself from its arms and stepped back.

  For a long moment, Nom writhed, pouring all the ancient ferocity of its nature into an effort for freedom. But it could not break him.

  Slowly it appeared to understand that it had finally met a man able to destroy it. It stopped fighting. Its arms sank to its sides. Long quiverings ran through its muscles like anticipations of death.

  By degrees, Covenant relaxed his power, though he kept a handful of fire blazing from his ring. Soon the beast stood free of flame.

  Pitchwife began to chuckle like a man who had been brought back from the edge of hysteria. Findail gazed at Covenant as if he were uncertain of what he was seeing. But Covenant had no time yet for anything except the Sandgorgon. With tentative movements, Nom tested its release. Surprise aggravated its quivering. Its head jerked from side to side, implying disbelief. Carefully as if it feared what it was doing, it raised one arm to aim a blow at Covenant’s head.

  Covenant clenched his fist, sending a spew of fire into the ring he had created above him. But he did not strike. Instead, he fought his rusty voice into use.

  “If you don’t kill me, you won’t have to go back to the Doom.”

  Nom froze as if it understood him. Trembling in every muscle, it lowered its arm.

  A moment later, the beast surprised him by sinking to the floor. Its quivering grew stronger, then began to subside. Deliberately the Sandgorgon touched its forehead to the stone near Covenant’s feet like an offer of service.

  Before Covenant could react, Nom rose erect again. Its blank face revealed nothing. Turning with animal dignity, it climbed to the broken doorway, picked its way without hesitation through the rubble of the architrave, and disappeared down the passage.

  In the distance, the sounds of collapsing stone had receded; but at intervals an occasional dull thud reached the cell, as if a section of wall or ceiling had fallen. Nom must have done serious damage on the way inward.

  Abruptly Covenant became aware of the brightness of his fire. It pained his sight as if his orbs had relapsed to normalcy. He reduced his power until it was only a small flame on his ring. But he did not release it entirely. All of Bhrathairealm lay between the company and Starfare’s Gem; and he did not mean to remain a prisoner any longer. Memories of Revelstone came back to him—helplessness and venom in revulsion. In the aftermath of the soothtell, he had killed twenty-one members of the na-Mhoram’s Clave. The fang-marks on his forearm continued to gleam at him. He became suddenly urgent as he turned to look at his companions.

  Vain stood nearby: the iconography of the ur-viles in human form. His lips wore a black grin of relish. But Covenant had no time to spend on the Demondim-spawn. How quickly would Kasreyn be able to rally the defenses of the Sandhold? He thrust past Vain toward his friends.

  The First murmured his name in a limping voice. She appeared hardly able to support the weight of her reprieve. At her side, Pitchwife shed tears unabashedly and faded in and out of laughter. The severe bruise at his temple seemed to damage his emotional balance. Honninscrave stood with a broken chain dangling from his free arm and blood dripping from his wrists; but his face was clenched around the new hope Covenant had given him.

  From the other walls, Haruchai eyes reflected the white gold like pride. They looked as extravagant as the Vow which had bound the Bloodguard to the Lords beyond death and sleep. Even Ceer’s orbs shone, though behind the reflections lay a pain so acute that even Covenant’s superficial sight could read it. Red fluid oozed from the bandages around his knee.

  Seadreamer seemed unaware of Covenant. The mute Giant’s gaze was glazed and inward. His manacled hands strained toward his head as if he ached to cover his face. But at least he showed no physical hurt.

  Then Covenant saw Linden.

  She staggered him. She hung from her rigid fetters as if both her arms had been broken. Her head had slumped forward; her wheaten hair veiled her face and chest. Covenant could not tell if she were breathing, if he had hurt or killed her in his struggle with Nom.

  Findail had been murmuring almost continuously. “Praise the Würd that he has desisted.” The words came in snatches of apprehension. “Yet the outcome of the Earth lies in the hands of a madman. She has opened the path of ruin. Was I not Appointed to prevent her? My life is now forfeit. It is insufferable.”

  Covenant feared to approach her, dreaded to see that she had been wounded or worse. He flung his panic at Findail. His fists knotted the Elohim’s creamy mantle. His power gathered to blare through Findail’s lean flesh.

  “What happened to her?”

  For an instant, Findail’s yellow eyes seemed to consider the wisdom of simply melting out of Covenant’s grasp. But instead he said, “Withhold your fire, ring-wielder. You do not know the peril. The fate of the Earth is fragile in your ungentle hands.” Covenant sent out a flare of rage. At once, Findail added, “I will answer.”

  Covenant did not release him. Wild magic roiled in him like a nest of snakes. His heart beat on the verge of an outcry.

  “She has been silenced,” Findail said carefully, studying Covenant as he spoke, “as you were silenced at the Elohimfest. Entering you, she took the stillness which warded you into herself.” He spoke as if he were trying to make Covenant hear another message, an implied justification for what the Elohim had done. But Covenant had no ears for such things. Only the clench of his fists kept him from exploding.

  “But for her it will not endure,” Findail went on. “It is yours, formed for you, and will not hold her. She will return to herself in her own time. Therefore,” he continued more urgently, “there is no call for this wild magic. You must quell it. Do you not hear me? The Earth rests upon your silence.”

  Covenant was no longer listening. He thrust Findail away. Fire flashed from the opening of his hands like an instant of tinder. Turning to Linden, he struck the bonds from her arms, the chains from her ankles, then reached out to catch her. But she did not fall: her body reflexively found its balance as if her most primitive instincts prompted her to avoid the necessity of his embrace. Slowly her head came up. In the yellow-and-white light of torches and wild magic, he saw that her eyes were empty.

  Oh, Linden! He could not stop himself. He put his arms around her, hugged and rocked her as if she were a child. He had been like this himself. And she had done it to herself for him. His embrace spread a penumbra of argence over her. The flow of his power covered her as if he would never be able to let her go. He did not know whether to weep because she was alive or to cry out because she was so destitute. She had done it to herself. For him.

  Brinn spoke firmly, without fear or any other inflection. “Ur-Lord, this Kemper will not wish to permit our departure. We must hasten.”

  “Aye, Giantfriend,” said the First. Every passing moment restored more of her combative steadiness. “Starfare’s Gem remains at risk, and we are far from it. I doubt neither Sevinhand’s resource nor his valiance, but I am eager to quit this place and set my feet once again upon the dromond.”

  Those were words that Covenant understood—not vague threats such as Findail uttered, but a concrete call to action. The Elohim had said, The outcome of the Earth lies in the hands of a madman. He had asked for the ring. And Covenant had killed so many people, despite his own revulsion for bloodshed. He distrusted all power. Yet the wild magic ran through him like a pulse of rapture, avid for use, and consuming. The First’s urging restored to him the importance of his quest, the need for survival and flight.

  She brought back images of Kasreyn, who had forced Linden to this extremity.

  Carefully he released Linden, stepp
ed back from her. For a long moment, he studied her, fixing her blank and desirable face in his mind like a focus for all his emotions. Then he turned to his companions.

  With a mental gesture, he struck the bonds from their wrists and ankles, beginning with Seadreamer and then Ceer so that the mute Giant could tend the injured Haruchai. Ceer’s hurt gave him a renewed pang which made flame spill from his arms as if he were nothing more than firewood for the wild magic. More than once, he had healed himself, preserved himself from harm. Yet his numbness rendered him incapable of doing the same for his friends. He had to exert a fierce restraint to hold his frustration back from another explosion.

  In a moment, the rest of the company was free. Pitchwife was uncertain on his feet, still suffering the effects of the blow he had received. But Brinn moved forward as if he were prepared to attempt anything in Covenant’s service. Cail took charge of Linden. The First drew her new longsword, gripped it in both fists; and her eyes were as keen as the edges of the iron. Honninscrave flexed the chain he had broken, testing its usefulness as a weapon.

  They spent a short moment savoring the taste of their release. Then the First sprang up the stairs out of the cell, and the company followed her.

  The outer corridor disappeared around corners to left and right; but the First immediately chose the direction the departing Sandgorgon had taken. Covenant went down that passage behind her with Brinn and Honninscrave beside him and his other companions at his back. The Giants had to stoop because the corridor was too low-ceilinged for them. But beyond the first corner was a larger hallway marked by many cell doors. The hustin that had guarded the place were dead now, lying broken where Nom had left them. Covenant did not take the time to look into the cells; but he snapped all the door-bolts as he passed.

  That hall gave into a warren of passages. The First was forced to halt, uncertain of her way. A moment passed before Brinn spotted a stair ascending from the end of one corridor. At once, the company started in that direction.

  Ahead of them, a slim woman came down the stairs, began running toward them. When she saw them, she stumbled to a stop in surprise, then hurried forward again.