The One Tree t2cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Mistaking the Giant's intent, Ceer stepped between him and Vain, balanced himself to defend the Demondim-spawn. But an instant later, Seadreamer struck, not at Vain, but at the foremast. With his full weight and momentum, he dove against the mast. The impact sent a palpable quiver through the stone.

  The shock knocked him to the deck. At once, he rebounded to his feet, attacked again. Slapping his arms around the mast like a wrestler, he heaved at it as if he wanted to tear it from its moorings. His passion was so vivid that for a moment Linden feared he might succeed.

  Honninscrave leaped at Seadreamer's back, tried to pull him away. But he could not break the hold of Seadreamer's ferocity. Ceer and Hergrom moved to help the Master.

  A worn sad voice stopped them. “Enough.” It seemed to sough from the air. “I have no desire to cause such distress.”

  Seadreamer fell back. Vain stiffened.

  Out of the stone of the mast, a figure began to flow. Leaving its hiding place, it translated itself into human form.

  One of the Elohim.

  He wore a creamy and graceful robe, but it did not conceal the etched leanness of his limbs, the scar-pallor of his skin. Under the unkempt silver sweep of his hair, his face was cut and marked with onerous perceptions. Around his yellow eyes, his sockets were as dark as old blood.

  Gasping inwardly, Linden recognized Findail the Appointed.

  As he took shape, he faced Seadreamer. “Your pardon,” he said in a voice like habitual grief. “Miscomprehending the depth of your Earth-Sight, I sought to conceal myself from you. It was not my purpose to inspire such distrust. Yet my sojourn through the seas to accompany you was slow and sorely painful to one who has been sent from his home in Elemesnedene. In seeking concealment, I judged poorly-as the swiftness with which you have descried me witnesses. Please accept that I intended no harm.”

  Everyone on the foredeck stared at him; but no one replied. Linden was stricken dumb. Pitchwife she could not see-he was behind her. But Honninscrave's features reflected what she felt. And Seadreamer sat huddled on the deck with his hands clamped over his face as if he had just beheld the countenance of his death. Only the Haruchai betrayed no reaction.

  Findail appeared to expect no response. He shifted his attention to Vain. His tone tightened. “To you I say, No.” He pointed rigidly at the centre of Vain's chest, and the muscles of his arm stood out like whipcord. “Whatever else you may do, or think to do, that I will not suffer. I am Appointed to this task, but in the name of no duty will I bear that doom.”

  In answer, Vain grinned like a ghoul.

  A grimace deepened the erosion of Findail's mien. Turning his back on the Demondim-spawn, he moved stiffly forward to stand at the prow of the Giantship, gazing outward like a figurehead.

  Linden gaped after him for a moment, looked around at her companions. Honninscrave and Pitchwife were crouched beside Seadreamer; the other Giants appeared too stunned to act. The Haruchai watched Findail, but did not move. With a convulsion of will, she wrenched herself into motion. To the nearest crewmember, she rasped, “Call the First.” Then she went after the Elohim.

  When she reached him, he glanced at her, gave her a perfunctory acknowledgment; but her presence made no impression on the old rue he had chosen to wear. She received the sudden impression that she was the cause of his distress-and that he meant to hide the fact from her at any cost. For no clear reason, she remembered that his people had expected the Sun-Sage and ring-wielder to be the same person. At first, she could not find the words with which to accost him.

  But one memory brought back others, and with them came the rage of helplessness and betrayal she felt toward the Elohim. Findail had faced back toward the open Sea. She caught hold of his shoulder, demanded his notice. Through her teeth, she grated, “What in hell are you doing here?”

  He hardly seemed to hear her. His yellow eyes were vague with loss, as if in leaving Elemesnedene he had been torn out of himself by the roots. But he replied, “Sun-Sage, I have been Appointed to this task by my people-to procure if I can the survival of the Earth. In the clachan you were given no better answer, and I may not answer more clearly now. Be content with the knowledge that I intend no hurt.”

  “No hurt?” she spat back at him. “You people have done nothing but hurt. You-” She stopped herself, nearly choking on visions of Covenant and Vain and Seadreamer. “By God, if you don't come up with a better answer than that, I'll have you thrown overboard.”

  “Sun-Sage.” He spoke gently, but made no effort to placate her. “I regret the necessity of the ring-wielder's plight. For me it is a middle way, balancing hazard and safety. I would prefer to be spared entirely. But it boots nothing to rail against me. I have been Appointed to stand among you, and no power accessible to you may drive me forth. Only he whom you name Vain has it within him to expel me. I would give much that he should do so.”

  He surprised her. She believed him instinctively-and did not know what to do about it. “Vain?” she demanded. Vain? But she received no reply. Beyond the prow, the rough waves appeared strangely brittle in the odd raw brilliance of the sunlight. Spray smacked up from the sides of the Giantship and was torn apart by the contradictory winds. They winced back and forth across the deck, troubling her hair like gusts of prescience. Yet she made one more attempt to pierce the Elohim. Softly, vehemently, she breathed, “For the last time, I'm not the goddamn Sun-Sage! You've been wrong about that from the beginning. Everything you're doing is wrong.”

  His yellow gaze did not flinch. “For that reason among many others I am here.”

  With an inward snarl, she swung away from him-and nearly collided with the hard, mail-clad form of the First. The Swordmain stood there with iron and apprehension in her eyes. In a voice like a quiet blade, she asked, “Does he speak truly? Do we lack all power against him?”

  Linden nodded. But her thoughts were already racing in another direction, already struggling for the self-command she

  required. She might prove Findail wrong. But she needed to master herself. Searching for a focal point, an anchorage against which to brace her resolve, she lifted her face to the First.

  “Tell me about your examination. In Elemesnedene. What did they do to you?”

  The First was taken aback by the unexpectedness, the apparent irrelevance, of the question. But Linden held up her demand; and after a moment the First drew herself into a formal stance. “Pitchwife has spoken to you,” she said flatly.

  “Yes.”

  “Then perhaps you will comprehend that which befell me.” With one hand, she gripped the hilt of her falchion. The other she held straight at her side as if to restrain it from impatience or protest.

  “In my testing,” she said, “one of the Elohim came before me in the semblance of a Giant. By some art, he contrived to wear the lineaments and countenance of Pitchwife. But not my husband as I have known him. Rather, he was Pitchwife as he might have grown from a perfect birth-flawless of limb, tall and proud of stance, hale in every way which becomes a Giant.” Memory suffused her gaze; but her tone held its cutting edge. “He stood thus before me as Pitchwife should have been born and grown, so that the outward seeming well became the spirit I have learned to love.”

  Pitchwife stood near her, listening with a crooked smile. But he did not try to express the things which shone in his orbs.

  The First did not waver. “At first I wept. But then I laughed. For all his cunning, that Elohim could not equal the joy which enlightens Pitchwife my husband.”

  A glint of hard humour touched her tone. “The Elohim misliked my laughter. But he could not answer it, and so my examination was brought to a displeasurable ending for him.”

  Pitchwife's whole face chortled, though he made no sound.

  A long shiver of recollection ran through Linden. Speaking half to the First, half to the discomfited sea and the acute sky, she said, “The only thing Daphin did to me was answer questions.” Then she stepped past the Giants, left their incomprehen
sion behind as she made her way toward Foodfendhall and the underdecks. Toward Covenant's cabin.

  The uncertainty of the dromond's footing affected her balance. Starfare's Gem moved with a tight slewing pace, veering and shaking its head at the unexpected force of the swells. But Linden caught herself against walls when she had to, or against Cail, and kept going. Maybe she had no power to extort the truth from Findail. But Covenant did. If she could somehow pierce the veil which covered his consciousness like a winding-sheet. She was suddenly eager to make the attempt.

  She told herself that she was eager for his restitution. She wanted his companionship, his conviction. But she was thin-lipped and stiff with anger, and within her there was darkness stirring.

  At the door of Covenant's cabin, she met Brinn. He had come out to meet her. Stolidly, he barred her way. His distrust was tangible in the air of the companionway. Before Elemesnedene, he had never questioned her right of access to Covenant; but now he said bluntly, “Chosen, what is your purpose here?”

  She bit back a curse. Breathing deeply in an effort to steady herself, she said, “We've got an Elohim aboard, in case you haven't heard. It's Findail. They sent him here for something, and there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it. The only one of us who has that kind of power is Covenant. I'm going to try to reach him.”

  Brinn glanced toward Cail as if he were asking Cail to vouch for her. Then he gave her a slight bow of acquiescence and opened the door.

  Glaring, she moved into the cabin, then watched him until he closed the door after her, leaving her alone with Covenant.

  There for a moment she hesitated, trying to muster her courage. But Covenant's featureless presence gripped her like a hand on the back of her neck; it compelled her to face him.

  He sat in a stone chair beside the small round table as if he had been deliberately positioned there. His legs were straight, formally placed; he did not slouch; his forearms lay on his thighs, with his hands open and the palms laid bare. A tray on the table contained the remains of a meal. Apparently, Brinn had been feeding the Unbeliever. But Covenant was unaware of such things. His slack face confronted the empty air as if it were just another avatar of the emptiness within him.

  Linden groaned. The first time she had ever seen him, he had thrown open the door of his house like a hurling of vituperation, the fire and fever of his eyes barely restrained; his mouth had been as strict as a commandment. In spite of

  his exhaustion, he had been living the life he had chosen, and he had appeared to her strangely indomitable and pure.

  But now the definition of his features was obscured by the scruffy helplessness of his beard; and the gray which raddled the hair over his forehead gave him an appearance of caducity. The flesh of his face sagged as if he had lost all hope. His eyes were dry-lustreless as death.

  He looked like her father had looked when his last blood had fallen to the warped old floorboards of the attic.

  But Covenant still had pulse and respiration. Food and fluids sustained his life. When he uttered his refrain, as distinct as an augur, he seemed beneath all his loss to be aware of her-and terrified of what she meant to do to him.

  She would have to possess him. Like a Raver. The thought filled her mouth with acid revulsion. But she did not hesitate. She could feel paralysis crouching around her. The fear which had so often bereft her of will was imminent in every wrench of her heart. The fear of what she would become. Trembling, she pulled the other chair close to Covenant's knees, sat down, placed her hands in his flaccid grasp as if even now he might preserve them from failure. Then she tried to open herself to his dead gaze.

  Again, his darkness flooded into her, pouring through the conduit of her senses.

  There she saw the danger. Inspired by his passive slackness, his resemblance to futility, her old hunger rose up in her gorge.

  Instinctively, she fought it, held herself in the outer twilight of his night, poised between consciousness and abandonment. But she could not look away from the fathomless well of his emptiness. Already she was able to perceive facets of his condition which were hidden from the outside. She saw to her surprise that the power which had silenced his mind had also stilled the venom in him. It was quiescent; he had sunk beyond its reach.

  Also she saw the qualities which had made him pervious to the Elohim. They would not have been able to bereave him so deeply if he had not already been exposed to them by his native impulse to take all harm upon himself. From that source arose both his power and his defenselessness. It gave him a dignity which she did not know how to emulate.

  But her will had fallen into its familiar trap. There could be no right or valid way to enter him like this, to desecrate his integrity with her uninvited exigencies-and no right or bearable way to leave him in his plight, to let his need pass without succour. And because she could not resolve the contradiction, she had no answer to the dark, angry thing in the pit of her heart which came leaping up at the chance for power. Covenant's power: the chance to be a true arbiter of life and death.

  Fierce with hunger, she sprang down into him.

  Then the night bore her away.

  For a time, it covered all the world. It seemed to stagger every firmament like a gale; yet it was nothing like a gale. Winds had direction and timbre; they were soft or strong, warm or chill. But his darkness was empty of anything which would have named it, given it definition. It was as lorn as the abysm between stars, yet it held no stars to chart its purpose. It filled her like Gibbon's touch, and she was helpless against it, helpless-her father had thrown the key out the window and she possessed no strength or passion that could call him back from death.

  The dark swept her around and down like a maelstrom without movement or any other sensation except loss; and from its pit images began to emerge. A figure like an incarnation of the void came toward her across the desert. It was obscured by heatwaves and hallucination. She could not see who it was. Then she could.

  Covenant.

  He struggled to scream, but had no mouth. Scales covered half his face. His eyes were febrile with self-loathing. His forehead was pale with the excruciation of his lust and abhorrence. Eagerness and dread complicated his gait; he moved like a cripple as he approached her, aimed himself at her heart.

  His arms had become snakes. They writhed and hissed from his shoulders, gaping to breathe and bite. The serpent-heads which had been his hands brandished fangs as white as bone.

  She was caught. She knew that she should raise her hands, try to defend herself; but they hung at her sides like mortality, too heavy to lift against the doom of those fangs.

  Surging forward, Covenant rose in front of her like all the failures and crimes and loves of her life. When his serpents struck, they knocked her away into another darkness altogether.

  Later, she felt that she was being strangled in massive coils. She squirmed and whimpered for release, unable to break free. Her failed hands were knotted in the blanket Cail had spread over her. The hammock constricted her movements. She wanted to scream and could not. Fatal waters filled her throat. The dimness of her cabin seemed as ruinous as Covenant's mind.

  But then with a wrench the fact of her surroundings penetrated her. This was her hammock, her cabin. The air was obscured with the dusk of dawn or evening, not the dark void into which she had fallen. The faintly remembered taste of diamondraught in her mouth was not the taste of death.

  The cabin appeared to lie canted around her, like a house which had been broken from its foundations by some upheaval. When she felt the dromond's pitching, she realised that Starfare's Gem was listing heavily, causing her hammock to hang at an angle to the walls. She sensed the vibration of winds and seas through the hull of the Giantship. The dimness did not come from dawn or evening. It was the cloud-locked twilight of a storm.

  The storm was bad-and becoming monstrous.

  Her mind was full of snakes. She could not wrestle free of them. But then a movement near the table took her attention. P
eering through the gloom, she made out Cail. He sat in one of the chairs, watching her as if no inadequacy or even betrayal on her part could alter his duty toward her. Yet in the obscurity of the cabin he looked as absolute as a figure of judgment, come to hold every count of her futility against her.

  “How long-?” she croaked. The desert was still in her throat, defying the memory of diamondraught. She felt that time had passed. Too much time-enough for everything to have recoiled against her. “Have I been out?”

  Cail rose to his feet. “A day and a night.”

  In spite of his inflexibility, she clung to his dim visage so that she would not slip back among the serpents. “Covenant?”

  The Haruchai shrugged fractionally. “The ur-Lord's plight is unaltered.” He might as well have said, You have failed. If it was ever your purpose to succeed.

  Clumsily, she left the hammock. She did not want to lie before him like a sacrifice. He offered to assist her; but she rejected his aid, lowered herself alone to the stepladder, then to the floor, so that she could try to face him as an equal.

  “Of course I wanted to succeed.” Fleeing from images of Covenant's mind, she went farther than she intended. “Do you blame me for everything?”

  His mien remained blank. “Those are your words.” His tone was as strict as a reproof. “No Haruchai has spoken them.”

  “You don't have to,” she retorted as if Covenant's plight had broken something in her chest. “You wear them on your face.”

  Again, Cail shrugged. “We are who we are. This protest skills nothing.”

  She knew that he was right. She had no cause to inflict her self-anger on him as if it were his fault. But she had swallowed too much loathing. And she had failed in paralysis. She had to spit out some of the bile before it sickened her. We are who we are. Pitchwife had said the same thing about the Elohim.

  “Naturally not,” she muttered. “God forbid that you might do or even think much less be anything wrong. Well, let me tell you something. Maybe I've done a lot of things wrong. Maybe I've done everything wrong.” She would never be able to answer the accusation of her failures. “But when I had you sent out of Elemesnedene — when I let the Elohim do what they did to Covenant — I was at least trying to do something right.”