The One Tree

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  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 hoofbeats.

  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 Call’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 Harbor 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 clamor of oars. Tricked by one of Sevinhand’s maneuvers, 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 saddle horn, 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.

  “Well 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 Harbor 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, signaling unmistakably his intent to prevent any pursuit of the Giantship. Like the Lady Alif, he had found his own conception of honor 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 sh
e 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 outmaneuver the warships of the Bhrathair was astonishing. The Giantship had become like Covenant’s right hand, incomplete and imprecise.

  Yet Covenant stood angrily near the center 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.”

  An involuntary flush burned Linden’s face. Her arm twitched as if she were about to make some request. But her hand hung lifeless at the end of her dead forearm.

  “Chosen.” The First’s throat was clenched as if words were weapons which she gripped sternly. “There is no need that you should bear witness to our discord. It is plain to all that you are sorely burdened and weary. Will you not return to your cabin for aliment and slumber?”

  Brinn remained still while she spoke. But when she finished, he contradicted her squarely. “There is need. She is the hand of Corruption among us, and she sought Ceer’s death when he had taken a mortal wound which should have befallen her.” The dispassion of his tone was as trenchant as sarcasm. “Let her make answer—if she is able.”

  “Paugh!” Pitchwife spat. His grotesque features held more ire than Linden had ever seen in him. “You judge in great haste, Haruchai. You heard as all did the words of the Elohim. To Covenant Giantfriend he said, ‘She has been silenced as you were silenced at the Elohimfest.’ And in taking that affliction upon herself she purchased our lives from the depths of the Sandhold. How then is she blameworthy for her acts?”

  Covenant was staring at Linden as if he were deaf to the interchanges around him. But the muscles at the corners of his eyes and mouth reacted to every word, wincing almost imperceptibly. His beard and his hot gaze gave him a strange resemblance to the old man who had once told her to Be true. But his skin had the hue of venom; and beneath the surface lay his leprosy like a definitive conviction or madness, indefeasible and compulsory. He was sure of those things—and of nothing else, either in himself or in her.

  Are you not evil?

  In a rush of weakness, she wanted to plead with him, beg him to call back those terrible words, although he was not the one who had uttered them. But Brinn was casting accusations at her, and she could not ignore him.

  “No, Giant,” the Haruchai replied to Pitchwife. “The haste is yours. Bethink you. While the silence of the Elohim was upon him, ur-Lord Thomas Covenant performed no act. He betrayed neither knowledge nor awareness. Yet was she not capable of action?”

  Pitchwife started to retort. Brinn stopped him. “And have we not been told the words which Gibbon-Raver spoke to her? Did he not say, ‘You have been especially chosen for this desecration’? And since that saying, have not all her acts wrought ill upon us?” Again Pitchwife tried to protest; but the Haruchai overrode him. “When the ur-Lord fell to the Raver, her hesitance”—he stressed that word mordantly— “imperiled both him and Starfare’s Gem. When the Elohim sought to bereave him of our protection, she commanded our dismissal, thus betraying him to the ill intent of those folk. Though she was granted the right of intervention, she refused to wield her sight to spare him from his doom.

  “Then, Giant,” Brinn went on, iterating his litany of blame, “she did not choose to succor the ur-Lord’s silence. She refused us to assail Kasreyn in Hergrom’s defense, when the Kemper was alone in our hands. She compelled us to reenter the Sandhold when even the Appointed urged flight. Her aid she did not exercise until Hergrom had been slain and Ceer injured—until all were imprisoned in the Kemper’s
dungeon, and no other help remained.

  “Hear me.” His words were directed at the First now—words as hard as chips of flint. “Among our people, the old tellers speak often of the Bloodguard who served the former Lords of the Land—and of Kevin Landwaster, who wrought the Ritual of Desecration. In that mad act, the old Lords met their end, for they were undone by the Desecration. And so also should the Bloodguard have ended. Had they not taken their Vow to preserve the Lords or die? Yet they endured, for Kevin Landwaster had sent them from him ere he undertook the Ritual. They had obeyed, not knowing what lay in his heart.

  “From that obedience came doubt among the Bloodguard, and with doubt the door to Corruption was opened. The failure of the Bloodguard was that they did not judge Kevin Landwaster—or did not judge him rightly. Therefore Corruption had its way with the old Lords and with the Bloodguard. And the new Lords would have likewise fallen, had not the ur-Lord accepted upon himself the burden of the Land.

  “Now I say to you, we will not err in that way again. The purity of any service lies in those who serve, not in that which they serve, and we will not corrupt ourselves by trust of that which is false.

  “Hear you, Giant?” he concluded flatly. “We will not again fail of judgment where judgment is needed. And we have judged this Linden Avery. She is false—false to the ur-Lord, false to us, false to the Land. She sought to slay Ceer in his last need. She is the hand of Corruption among us. There must be retribution.”

  At that, Covenant flinched visibly. The First glowered at Brinn. Pitchwife gaped aghast. But Linden concentrated on Covenant alone. She was not surprised by Brinn’s demand.