The One Tree

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Pitchwife complied, mystification in his eyes. The First said nothing. Galewrath frowned noncommittally. Seadreamer’s gaze shifted back and forth between Linden and Brinn as if he were trying to guess her intentions.

  She did not hesitate. Grasping Brinn’s right limb, she pulled it over the edge of the table, leaned her weight on it to stretch it against its socket. When she was sure of her position, she put her mouth close to his ear. Slowly, explicitly, she articulated, “Now I’m going to break your arm.”

  The instant violence of Brinn’s reaction took Pitchwife by surprise, broke his hold. He failed to stop the hard arc of Brinn’s fist as the Haruchai flipped toward Linden, struck at her face.

  His blow caught her on the forehead. She reeled backward, crashed against one of the pillars. Holding her ears as if the lanterns were caterwauling like banshees, she slumped to the floor.

  For an instant, Covenant’s life stopped. Cursing, the First strode toward Linden. Brinn dropped from the table, landed lightly on his feet. Galewrath planted herself in front of him, cocked her massive fist to keep him away from Linden. Cail sat up as if he meant to go to Brinn’s aid. Together Pitchwife and Seadreamer grappled for his arms.

  Linden knotted her knees to her chest, clamped her head in both hands, rolled herself weakly from side to side as if she were beset by all the Dancers at once.

  From a great distance, Covenant heard a voice snarling, “Damn you, Brinn! If she’s hurt, I’ll break your bloody arm myself!” It must have been his voice, but he ignored it. He was swarming toward Linden. Somehow he shouldered the First aside. Crouching beside Linden, he pulled her into his lap, wrapped his arms around her. She writhed in his embrace as if she were going mad.

  A shout gathered in his mind, pounded toward utterance:

  Let her go!

  The puissance in him seemed to reach her. She dragged her hands down from her head, flung her face toward him. Her mouth shaped a word that might have been, No!

  He held himself still as her eyes struggled into focus on his face. One by one, her muscles unclenched. She looked as pale as fever; her breathing rattled in her throat. But she raised a whisper out of her stunned chest. “I think I’m all right.”

  Around Covenant, the lights capered to the tune of the storm’s ire. He closed his eyes so that he would not lose control.

  When he opened them again, the First and Pitchwife were squatting on either side, watching Linden’s fragile recovery. Brinn and Cail stood a short distance away. Behind them loomed Seadreamer as if he were prepared to break both their necks. Galewrath waited to help him. But the Haruchai ignored the Giants. They looked like men who had made up their minds.

  “There is no need to damn us,” said Brinn flatly. Neither he nor Cail met Covenant’s glower. “We have already gazed upon the visage of our doom. Yet we seek pardon. It was not my intent to do harm.”

  He appeared to have no interest in his own apology. “We withdraw our accusation against the Chosen. She has adjudged us rightly. Mayhap she is in sooth the hand of Corruption among us. But there are other Corruptions which we hold in greater abhorrence.

  “We speak neither for our people among their mountains nor for those Haruchai who may seek to wage themselves against the depredations of the Clave. But we will no longer serve you.”

  At that, a pang of astonishment went through Covenant. No longer serve—? He hardly understood the words. Distress closed his throat. Linden tensed in his arms. What are you talking about?

  What did they do to you?

  Then the First was on her feet. With her stern, iron beauty, her arms folded like bonds across her chest, she towered over the Haruchai. “There is delusion upon you.” She spoke like the riposte of a blade. “The song of the merewives has wrought madness into your hearts. You speak of doom, but that which the Dancers offer is only death, nothing more. Are you blind to the peril from which you were retrieved? Almost Galewrath and I failed of your rescue, for we found you at a depth nigh to our limits. There you lay like men bemused by folly. I know not what dream of joy or transport you found in that song—and I care not. Recumbent like the dead, you lay in no other arms than the limbs of coral which had by chance preserved you from a still deeper plunge. Whatever visions filled your unseeing eyes were the fruit of entrancement and brine. That is truth. Is it your intent to return to these merewives in the name of delusion?” Her arms corded with anger. “Stone and Sea, I will not—!”

  Brinn interrupted her without looking at her. “That is not our intent. We do not seek death. We will not again answer the song of the Dancers. But we will no longer serve either the ur-Lord or the Chosen.” His tone did not relent. He spoke as if he were determined to show himself no mercy. “We cannot.”

  “Can’t?” Covenant’s expostulation was muffled by alarm.

  But Brinn went on as if he were speaking to the First or to no one. “We doubt not what you have said. You are Giants, long-storied among the old tellers of the Haruchai. You have said that the song of the merewives is delusion. We acknowledge that you speak truth. But such delusion—”

  Then his voice softened in a way that Covenant had never heard before. “Ur-Lord, will you not rise to confront us? We will not stoop to you. But it is unseemly that we should thus stand above you.”

  Covenant looked at Linden. Her features were tense with the effort she made to recollect some semblance of stability; but she nodded, made a groping gesture toward Pitchwife. At once, the Giant lifted her out of Covenant’s arms, leaving him free to face the Haruchai.

  Stiffly he climbed to his feet. He felt wooden with emotions he was afraid to admit. Was he going to lose the Haruchai? The Haruchai, who had been as faithful as Ranyhyn from the beginning?

  What did they do to you?

  But then Brinn met his gaze for the first time; and the passion in those dispassionate orbs made him tremble. Starfare’s Gem heaved among the angry seas as if at any moment the granite might break. He started to spit out every word that came into his head. He did not want to hear what Brinn would say.

  “You made a promise.” His chest rose and fell with the rough force of his knowledge that he had no right to accuse the Haruchai of anything. “I didn’t want to accept it. I didn’t want to be responsible for any more service like the kind Bannor insisted on giving me. But I had no choice.” He had been more than half crippled by loss of blood, might have died of sheer remorse and futility on the upland plateau above Revelstone if Brinn had not aided him. “What in hell are you talking about?”

  “Ur-Lord.” Brinn did not swerve from the path he had chosen. “Did you not hear the song of the merewives?”

  “What has that got to do with it?” Covenant’s belligerence was hollow, but he could not set it aside. It was his only defense. “The only reason they took you is because they didn’t want anybody as flawed or at least destructive as I am.”

  Brinn shook his head, “Also,” he went on, “is it not truly said of the Unbeliever that at one time in his distress he vowed the Land to be a dream—a thing of falseness and seduction, not to be permitted?”

  That struck Covenant voiceless. Everything he might have said seemed to curdle in him, sickened by anticipation. He had told Linden on Kevin’s Watch, We’re sharing a dream—a belief he had once needed and later outgrown. It had become irrelevant. Until this moment, he had considered it to be irrelevant.

  Are you going to blame me for that too?

  Deliberately the Haruchai continued, “The First has said that the song of the Dancers is delusion. Perhaps in our hearts we knew it for delusion as we harkened to it. But we are Haruchai, and we gave it answer.

  “Mayhap you know too little of us. The lives of our people upon the mountains are strict and costly, for peaks and snows are no gentle bourne. Therefore are we prolific in our seed, that we may endure from generation to generation. The bond joining man to woman is a fire in us, and deep. Did not Bannor speak to you of this? For those who became Bloodguard, the loss of sleep and
death was a little thing, lightly borne. But the loss of wives—It was that which caused them to end their Vow when Corruption placed his hand upon them. Any man may fail or die. But how may one of the Haruchai who has left his wife in the name of a chosen fidelity endure to know that even his fidelity may be riven from him? Better the Vow had never been uttered, no service given.

  “Ur-Lord.” Brinn did not look away. He hardly blinked. Yet the unwonted implication of softness in his tone was unmistakable. “In the song of the merewives we heard the fire of our yearning for that which we have left behind. Assuredly we were deluded—but the delusion was sweet. Mountains sprang about us. The air became the keen breath which the peaks exhale from their snows. And upon the slopes moved the women who call to us in their longing for fire and seed and offspring.” For a moment, he broke into the tonal tongue of the Haruchai; and that language seemed to transform his visage, giving him an aspect of poetry. “Therefore did we leap to answer, disregarding all service and safety. The limbs of our women are brown from sun and birth. But there is also a whiteness as acute as the ice which bleeds from the rock of mountains, and it burns as the purest snow burns in the most high tor, the most wind-flogged col. For that whiteness, we gave ourselves to the Dancers of the Sea.”

  Covenant could no longer meet Brinn’s gaze. Banner had hinted at these things—things which made the Haruchai explicable. Their rigid and judgmental stance against the world came from this, that every breath they took was an inhalation of desire and loss.

  He looked to his companions for help; but none of them had any to offer. Linden’s eyes were misted with pain or recognition. Empathy twisted Pitchwife’s mien. And the First, who understood extravagance, stood beside Brinn and Cail as if she approved.

  Inflexibly Brinn went on, “Thus we demonstrated ourselves false. Our given fidelity we betrayed at the behest of a delusion. Our promise to you we were unable to keep. We are unworthy. Therefore we will no longer serve you. Our folly must end now, ere greater promises than ours become false in consequence.”

  “Brinn,” Covenant protested as if he were choking. “Cail.” His distress demanded utterance. “You don’t need to do that. Nobody blames you.” His voice was harsh, as if he meant to be brutal. Linden reached a hand weakly toward him like a plea for pity. Her eyes streamed with comprehension of the plight of the Haruchai. But he ignored her. The hard clench of his passion prevented him from speaking in any other way.

  “Bannor did the same thing. Just what you’re doing. We were standing on Landsdrop—with Foamfollower. He refused to come with us, when I needed—” He swallowed convulsively. “I asked him what he was ashamed of. He said, ‘I am not shamed. But I am saddened that so many centuries were required to teach us the limits of our worth. We went too far, in pride and folly. Mortal men should not give up wives and sleep and death for any service—lest the face of failure become too abhorrent to be endured.’ The same thing you’re saying now. But don’t you understand? It’s not that simple. Anybody can fail. But the Bloodguard didn’t just fail. They lost faith. Or why do you think Bannor had to meet me in Andelain? If you’re right, why didn’t he let you just go on paying the price of your unworth?”

  Covenant wanted to beat his frustration at Brinn. Grimly he restrained himself, strove instead to make his words felt through the Haruchai’s intransigence.

  “I’ll tell you why. Maybe no Vow or promise is the answer to Despite—but neither is abdication. He didn’t give me any promises, any gifts. He just said, ‘Redeem my people. Their plight is an abomination. And they will serve you well.’ ”

  Then he stopped. He could not go on; he understood too well the extremity of the man he faced. For a moment, Saltroamrest was silent except for the labor of the dromond’s pumps, the creaking of the masts, the muffled fury of the seas and wind. The lanterns continued to sway vulnerably. Seadreamer’s eyes burned at the Haruchai as if he sensed a strange hope in their intractable self-judgment.

  At last, Brinn spoke. He sounded almost gentle. “Ur-Lord, have we not served you well?”

  Covenant’s features contorted in bereavement. But he made a fierce effort, forced himself to reply, “You know you have.”

  Brinn did not flinch or hesitate. “Then let it end.”

  Covenant turned to Linden. His hands groped for contact with her. But his fingers were numb. He found no other answer in her.

  Later that night, in the privacy of her cabin, while the storm thrashed and clawed at the Giantship, he rubbed the sore muscles of her neck and back. His fingers worked at her as if they were desperate with loss. Gradually the diamondraught she had consumed to speed her recovery put her to sleep; but he did not stop massaging her until his hands were too tired to continue. He did not know what else to do with his despair. The defection of the Haruchai seemed to presage the collapse of all his hopes.

  Later still, Starfare’s Gem lifted its sails into the gray dawn and ran beyond the grief of the merewives. The rain ended like tears which had fallen too long; the wind frayed away toward other parts of the sea. Honninscrave needed only a slight adjustment of course to head the dromond directly for its goal.

  But the Haruchai did not relent.

  TWENTY-FOUR: The Isle

  The sky remained beclouded and blustery for two days, echoing the gray moil of the sea like indignation, as if Starfare’s Gem were an intrusion which vexed the region. But then the wind rose in dismissal, and the dromond was swept into a period of clear days and crystal nights. Under the sun, the sea joined the heavens without seam or taint; and at night the specific glitter of the stars marked out the path of the quest for any experienced gaze to read.

  Grimmand Honninscrave grew more eager every day. And the immaculate wind seemed to fan both the First and Pitchwife into a heat of anticipation. At unguarded moments, his misborn grotesquerie and her iron beauty looked oddly similar, as if their progress toward the One Tree were deepening their intimacy. The three of them studied the distance constantly, searching the horizon for validation of the choices which had taken them away from the Land in spite of Seadreamer’s plain Earth-Sight.

  Their keenness spread out across the Giantship, affecting all the crew. Even Heft Galewrath’s blunt features took on a whetted aspect. And Sevinhand’s old sadness passed through periods of sunshine like hope.

  Linden Avery watched them as she watched the ship itself and Covenant, trying to find her place among them. She understood the Giants, knew that much of their eagerness arose on Seadreamer’s behalf. His dumb misery was vivid to everyone. His people champed to accomplish their purpose and head back toward the Land, where he might be able to seek relief in the crisis of the Sunbane, the apotheosis of his vision. But she did not share that particular longing. She feared that the Giants did not recognize the true nature of his vision.

  And Covenant’s mood only aggravated her apprehension. He seemed avid for the One Tree to the point of fever. Emotionally if not physically, he had drawn away from her. The rejection of the Haruchai had driven him into a state of rigid defensiveness. When he talked, his voice had a ragged edge which he could not blunt; and his eyes sent out reflections of bloodshed. She saw in his face that he was remembering the Clave, people butchered to feed the Banefire, self-distrust; remembering power and venom over which he had no control. At times, his gaze was hollow with recollections of silence. Even his lovemaking became strangely vehement, as if despite their embraces he believed he had already lost her.

  She could not forget that he intended to send her back to her former life. He was fervid for the One Tree for his own reasons, hoping that it would enable him to fight Lord Foul with something other than white fire and destruction. But he also wanted it because of her. To send her back.

  She dreaded that, dreaded the One Tree. Seadreamer’s mute and untouchable trepidation ached in her like an open wound. Whenever he came within range of her senses, she felt his ambience bleeding. At times, she could barely rein herself from urging Covenant, the First, anyone wh
o would listen to abandon the quest—forget the One Tree, return to the Land, fight the Sunbane with whatever weapons were available and accept the outcome. She believed that Seadreamer knew exactly what Lord Foul was doing. And she did not want to be sent back.

  Late one night, when Covenant had at last fallen into a sleep free of nightmares, she left his side, went up to the decks. She wore her woolen robe. Though the air had become noticeably cooler during the past few days, she shied away from her old clothes as if they represented exigencies and failures she did not wish to reconsider. On the afterdeck, she found Starfare’s Gem riding unerringly before the wind under a moon already in its last quarter. Soon nothing would stand between the dromond and darkness except the ambiguous stars and a few lanterns. But for this night, at least, a crescent of light remained acute in the heavens.

  Sevinhand greeted her quietly from the wheeldeck; but she did not go to him. Beyond the wind, the long stone sea-running of the dromond, the slumber of the Giants who were not on watch, she sensed Seadreamer’s presence like a hand of pain cupped against her cheek. Huddling into her robe, she went forward.

  She found the mute Giant sitting with his back to the foremast, facing the prow and Findail’s silhouette. The small muscles around his eyes winced and tightened as he stared at Findail—and through Findail toward the One Tree—as if he were begging the Appointed to say the things which he, Seadreamer, could not. But Findail seemed immune to the Giant’s appeal. Or perhaps such supplications were a part of the burden which he had been Appointed to bear. He also faced the prospect of the One Tree as if he feared to take his eyes from it.

  In silence, Linden seated herself beside Seadreamer. He sat cross-legged, with his hands in his lap. At intervals, he turned the palms upward as if he were trying to open himself to the night, accept his doom. But repeatedly his fists clenched, shoulders knotted, transforming him to a figure of protest.