The One Tree t2cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  The First studied him narrowly. “What then is your counsel?”

  “This,” he said, “that we remain here, awaiting the goodwill of these folk. This is their land, and we are in their hands. Here, at least, if we are not welcomed we may return unmazed to Starfare's Gem and cast about us for some other hope.”

  The First made some reply; but Linden did not hear her. The sound of bells became abruptly louder, filling her ears. Again, the chiming reminded her of language. Do you-? she asked her companions. Do you hear bells? For the space of several heartbeats, she was unaware that she had not spoken aloud. The music seemed to enter her mind without touching her ears.

  Then the company was no longer alone. With an eldritch concatenation like the slow magic of dreams, the belling swirled around the trunk of a nearby ash; and a figure flowed out of the wood. It did not detach itself from the tree, was not hidden against the bark: from within the ash, it stepped forward as if it were modulating into a new form. Features emerged as the figure shaped itself: eyes like chrysoprase, delicate brows, a fine nose and soft mouth. Wattle-slim and straight, deft and proud, with a grave smile on her lips and a luminous welcome in her gaze, the woman came forward like an incarnation of the soul of the ash in which she had been contained; and her departure left no mark of presence or absence in the wood. A cymar draped her limbs like the finest sendaline.

  Linden stared. Her companions started in surprise. The Haruchai were poised on the balls of their feet. Covenant's mouth opened and closed involuntarily.

  But Honninscrave faced the approaching woman and bowed as if she were worthy of worship.

  She stopped before them. Her smile radiated power of such depth and purity that Linden could hardly bear to look at it. The woman was a being who transcended any health-sense. Softly, she said, “I am pleased that you so desire our goodwill.” Her voice also was music; but it did not explicate the ringing in Linden's mind. “I am Daphin.” Then she nodded to Honninscrave's bow. “You are Giants. We have known Giants.”

  Still the bells confused Linden, so that she was not sure of what she was hearing.

  Daphin turned to Brinn. “You we do not know. Perhaps the tale of your people will interest us.”

  The chiming grew louder. Daphin was gazing directly at Linden. Linden had no control over the sound in her head. But she almost gasped hi shock when Daphin said, “You are the Sun-Sage.”

  Before Linden could react or respond, the woman had turned to Covenant. He was staring at her as if his astonishment were a wound. At once, her smile fell. The bells clamoured like surprise or fear. Distinctly, she said, “You are not.” As the questers gaped at her, she suddenly melted down into the grass and was gone, leaving no trace of her passage on the wide lea.

  Seven: Elemesnedene

  LINDEN clamped her hands over her ears, and the chiming faded-not because of her hands, but because the gesture helped her focus her efforts to block or at least filter the sound. She was sweating in the humid sunlight. The Sun-Sage? Hints of panic flushed across her face. The Sun-Sage?

  Covenant swore repeatedly under his breath. His tone was as white as clenched knuckles. When she looked at him, she saw him glaring at the grass where Daphin had vanished as if he meant to blight it with fire.

  The Haruchai had not moved. Honninscrave's head had jerked back in astonishment or pain. Seadreamer gazed intently at Linden in search of understanding. Pitchwife stood beside the First as if he were leaning on her. Her eyes knifed warily back and forth between Linden and Covenant.

  Vain's black mien wore an aspect of suppressed excitement.

  “Sun-Sage?” the First asked rigidly. “What is this 'Sun-Sage?' ”

  Linden took a step toward Covenant. He appeared to be cursing at her. She could not bear it. “I'm not:' Her voice sounded naked in the sunshine, devoid of any music which would have given it beauty. ”You know I'm not."

  His visage flamed at her. “Damnation! Of course you are. Haven't you learned anything yet?”

  His tone made her flinch. Daphin's You are not formed a knot of ire in him that Linden could see as clearly as if it had been outlined on his forehead. He would not be able to alter the Sunbane. And because of him, the Elohim had withdrawn her welcome.

  With hard patience, the First demanded again, “What is this 'Sun-Sage'?”

  Covenant replied like a snarl, “Somebody who can control the Sunbane.” His features were acute with self-disgust.

  “They will not welcome us.” Loss stretched Honninscrave's voice thin. “Oh, Elohim!”

  Linden struggled for a way to answer Covenant without berating him. I don't have the power. Sweat ran into her eyes, blurring her vision. The tension of the company felt unnatural to her. This anger and grief seemed to violate the wide mansuetude of Woodenwold and the maidan. But then her senses reached farther, and she thought, No. That's not it. In some way, the valley's tranquillity appeared to be the cause of this intensity. The air was like a balm which was too potent to give anything except pain.

  But the opening of her percipience exposed her to the bells again. Or they were drawing closer. Chiming took over her mind. Pitchwife's voice was artificially muffled in her ears as he said, “Mayhap their welcome is not yet forfeit. Behold!”

  She blinked her sight clear in time to see two figures come flowing up out of the ground in front of her. Smoothly, they transformed themselves from grass and soil into human shapes.

  One was Daphin. Her smile was gone; in its place was a sober calm that resembled regret. But her companion wore a grin like a smirk.

  He was a man with eyes as blue as jacinths, the same colour as his mantle. Like Daphin's cymar, his robe was not a garment he had donned, but rather an adornment he had created within himself. With self-conscious elegance, he adjusted the folds of the cloth. The gleam in his eyes might have been pleasure of mockery. The distinction was confused by the obligate of the bells.

  “I am Chant,” he said lightly. “I have come for truth.”

  Both he and Daphin gazed directly at Linden.

  The pressure of their regard seemed to expose every fiber of her nature. By contrast, her health-sense was humble and crude. They surpassed all her conceptions.

  She reacted in instinctive denial. With a wrench of determination, she thrust the ringing into the background. The

  Elohim searched her as Gibbon had once searched her. Are you not evil? No. Not as long as the darkness had no power. “I'm not the Sun-Sage.”

  Chant cocked an eyebrow in disbelief.

  “If anybody is, it's him.” She pointed at Covenant, trying to turn the eyes of the Elohim away. “He has the ring.”

  They did not waver. Daphin's mien remained pellucid; but Chant's smile hinted at fierceness. “We have no taste for untruth”-his tone was satin-“and your words are manifestly untrue. Deny not that you are what you are. It does not please us. Explain, rather, why this man holds possession of your white ring.”

  At once, Covenant snapped, “It's not her ring. It's mine. It's always been mine.” Beside the Elohim, he sounded petulant and diminished.

  Chant's smile deepened, gripping Linden in its peril. “That also is untrue. You are not the Sun-Sage.”

  Covenant tensed for a retort. But Daphin forestalled him. Calmly, she said, “No. The ring is his. Its mark lies deeply within him.”

  At that, Chant looked toward his companion; and Linden sagged in relief. The shifting of his gaze gave her a palpable release.

  Chant frowned as if Daphin's contradiction broke an unspoken agreement. But she went on addressing Linden. “Yet here is a mystery. All our vision has seen the same truth — that the Sun-Sage and ring-wielder who would come among us in quest are one being. Thereon hinge matters of grave import. And our vision does not lie. Rawedge Rim and Woodenwold do not lie. How may this be explained, Sun-Sage?”

  Linden felt Covenant clench as if he were on the verge of fire. “What do you want me to do?” he grated. “Give it up?”

  Chant did n
ot deign to glance at him. “Such power ill becomes you. Silence would be more seemly. You stand among those who surpass you. Permit the Sun-Sage to speak.” Notes of anger ran through the music of the bells.

  Covenant growled a curse. Sensing his ire, Linden twisted herself out of the grip of the Elohim to face him. His visage Was dark with venom.

  Again, his vehemence appeared unnatural-a reaction to the air rather than to his situation or the Elohim. That impression sparked an inchoate urgency in her. Something here outweighed her personal denials. Intuitively, she pitched her voice so that Covenant must hear her.

  “I wouldn't be here without him.”

  Then she began to tremble at the responsibility she had implicitly accepted.

  The next moment, Pitchwife was speaking. “Peace, my friends,” he said. His misshapen face was sharp with uncharacteristic apprehension. “We have journeyed far to gain the boon of these Elohim. Far more than our mere lives hang in jeopardy.” His voice beseeched them softly. “Give no offense.”

  Covenant peered at Linden as if he were trying to determine the nature of her support and recognition. Suddenly, she wanted to ask him, Do you hear bells? If he did, he gave no sign. But what he saw in her both tightened and steadied him. Deliberately, he shrugged down his power. Without lifting his scrutiny from Linden, he said to the Elohim, “Forgive me. The reason we're here. It's urgent. I don't carry the strain very well.”

  The Elohim ignored him, continued watching Linden. But the timbre of anger drifted away along the music. “Perhaps our vision has been incomplete,” said Daphin. Her voice lilted like birdsong. “Perhaps there is a merging to come. Or a death.”

  Merging? Linden thought quickly. Death? She felt the same questions leaping in Covenant. She started to ask, What do you mean?

  But Chant had resumed his dangerous smile. Still addressing Linden as though she outranked all her companions, he said abruptly, “It is known that your quest is exigent. We are not a hasty people, but neither do we desire your delay.” Turning, he gestured gracefully along the Callowwail. “Will you accompany us to Elemesnedene?”

  Linden needed a moment to muster her response. Too much was happening. She had been following Covenant's lead since she had first met him. She was not prepared to make decisions for him or anyone else.

  But she had no choice. At her back crowded the emotions of her companions: Honninscrave's tension, the First's difficult silence, Pitchwife's suspense, Covenant's hot doubt. They all withheld themselves, waited for her. And she had her own reasons for being here. With a grimace, she accepted the role she had been given.

  “Thank you,” she said formally. "That's what we came for."

  Chant bowed as if she had shown graciousness; but she could not shake the impression that he was laughing at her secretly. Then the two Elohim moved away. Walking as buoyantly as if they shared the analystic clarity of the air, they went out into the yellow grass toward the heart of the maidan. Linden followed them with Cail at her side; and her companions joined her.

  She wanted to talk to them, ask them for guidance. But she felt too exposed to speak. Treading behind Chant and Daphin at a slight distance, she tried to steady herself on the tough confidence of the Haruchai.

  As she walked, she studied the surrounding maidan, hoping to descry something which would enable her to identify an Elohim who was not wearing human form. But she had not perceived any hint of Daphin or Chant before they had accosted the company; and now she was able to discern nothing except the strong autumn grass, the underlying loam, and the Callowwail's purity. Yet her sense of exposure increased. After a while, she discovered that she had been unconsciously clenching her fists.

  With an effort, she ungnarled her fingers, looked at them. She could hardly believe that they had ever held a scalpel or hypodermic. When she dropped them, they dangled at her wrists like strangers.

  She did not know how to handle the importance the Elohim had ascribed to her. She could not read the faint clear significance of the bells. Following Chant and Daphin, she felt that she was walking into a quagmire.

  An odd thought crossed her mind. The Elohim had given no word of recognition to Vain. The Demondim-spawn still trailed the company like a shadow; yet Chant and Daphin had not reacted to him at all. She wondered about that, but found no explanation.

  Sooner than she had expected, the fountainhead of the Callowwail became visible-a cloud of mist set in the centre of the maidan like an ornament. As she neared it, it stood out more clearly through its spray.

  It arose like a geyser from within a high mound of travertine. Its waters arched in clouds and rainbows to fall around the base of the mound, where they collected to form the

  River. The water looked as edifying as crystal, as clinquant as faery promises; but the travertine it had formed and dampened appeared obdurate, uncompromising. The mound seemed to huddle into itself as if it could not be moved by any appeal. The whorled and skirling shapes on its sides-cut and deposited by ages of spray, the old scrollwork of the water-gave it an elusive eloquence, but did not alter its essential posture.

  Beckoning for the company to follow, Daphin and Chant stepped lightly through the stream and climbed as easily as air up the side of the wet rock.

  There without warning they vanished as if they had melded themselves into travertine.

  Linden stopped, stared. Her senses caught no trace of the Elohim. The bells were barely audible.

  Behind her, Honninscrave cleared his throat. “Elemesnedene,” he said huskily. “The clachan of the Elohim. I had not thought that I would see such sights again.”

  Covenant scowled at the Master. “What do we do now?”

  For the first time since Starfare's Gem had dropped anchor outside the Raw, Honninscrave laughed. “As our welcomers have done. Enter.”

  Linden started to ask him how., then changed her mind. Now that the silence had been broken, another question was more important to her. “Do any of you hear bells?”

  The First looked at her sharply. “Bells?”

  Pitchwife's expression mirrored the First's ignorance. Seadreamer shook his head. Brinn gave a slight negative shrug.

  Slowly, Honninscrave said, “The Elohim are not a musical folk. I have heard no bells or any song here. And all the tales which the Giants tell of Elemesnedene make no mention of bells.”

  Linden groaned to herself. Once again, she was alone in what she perceived. Without hope, she turned to Covenant.

  He was not looking at her. He was staring like a thunder-head at the fountain. His left hand twisted his ring around and around the last finger of his half-hand.

  “Covenant?” she asked.

  He did not answer her question. Instead, he muttered between his teeth, “They think I'm going to fail. I don't need that. I didn't come all this way to hear that.” He hated the thought of failure in every line of his gaunt stubborn form.

  But then his purpose stiffened. “Let's get going. You're the Sun-Sage.” His tone was full of sharp edges and gall. For the sake of his quest, he fought to accept the roles the Elohim had assigned. “You should go first.”

  She started to deny once again that she was any kind of Sun-Sage. That might comfort him-or at least limit the violence coiling inside him. But again her sense of exposure warned her to silence. Instead of speaking, she faced the stream and the mound, took a deep breath, held it. Moving half a step ahead of Cail, she walked into the water,

  At once, a hot tingling shot through her calves, soaked down into her feet. For one heartbeat, she almost winced away. But then her nerves told her that the sensation was not harmful. It bristled across the surface of her skin like formication, but did no damage. Biting down on her courage, she strode through the stream and clambered out onto the old intaglio of the travertine. With Cail at her side, she began to ascend the mound.

  Suddenly, power seemed to flash around her as if she had been dropped like a coal into a tinderbox. Bells clanged in her head-chimes ringing in cotillion on all sid
es. Bubbles of glauconite and carbuncle burst in her blood; the air burned like a thurible; the world reeled.

  The next instant, she staggered into a wonderland.

  Stunned and gaping, she panted for breath. She had been translated by water and travertine to another place altogether-a place of eldritch astonishment.

  An opalescent sky stretched over her, undefined by any sun or moon, or by any clear horizons, and yet brightly luminous and warm. The light seemed to combine moonglow and sunshine. It had the suggestive evanescence of night and the specificity of day. And under its magic, wonders thronged in corybantic succession.

  Nearby grew a silver sapling. Though not tall, it was as stately as a prince; and its leaves danced about its limbs without touching them. Like flakes of precious metal, the leaves formed a chiaroscuro around the tree, casting glints and spangles as they swirled.

  On the other side, a fountain spewed globes of colour and light. Bobbing upward, they broke into silent rain and were inhaled again by the fountain.

  A furry shape like a jarcol went gambolling past and appeared to trip. Sprawling, it became a profuse scatter of flowers. Blooms that resembled peony and amaryllis sprayed open across the glistening greensward.

  Birds flew overhead, warbling incarnate. Cavorting in circles, they swept against each other, merged to form an abrupt pillar of fire in the air. A moment later, the fire leaped into sparks, and the sparks became gems — ruby and morganite, sapphire and porphyry, like a trail of stars-and the gems wafted away, turning to butterflies as they floated.

  A hillock slowly pirouetted to itself, taking arcane shapes one after another as it turned.

  And these were only the nearest entrancements. Other sights abounded: grand statues of water; a pool with its surface' woven like an arras; shrubs which flowed through a myriad elegant forms; catenulate sequences of marble, draped from nowhere to nowhere; animals that leaped into the air as birds and drifted down again as snow; swept-wing shapes of malachite flying in gracile curves; sunflowers the size of Giants, with imbricated ophite petals.