The One Tree t2cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  On the other side of the company, the gaddhi began to giggle.

  And out from under the virga came a plume of sand among the dunes, arrowing toward the Sandhold. It varied as the terrain varied, raising a long serpentine cloud; but its direction was unmistakable. It was aimed at the spot where Ceer and Hergrom stood against the Sandwall.

  Even from that distance, Linden felt the radiations of raw and hostile power.

  She pressed her uselessness against the parapet. Her companions stood aching behind her; but she did not turn to look at them, could not. Rant Absolain studied the approaching Sandgorgon and trembled in an ague of eagerness. The sun leaned down on the Sandhold like a reproach.

  Then the beast itself appeared. Bleached to an albino whiteness by ages of sun, it was difficult to see against the pale desert. But it ran forward with staggering speed and became clear.

  It was larger than the Haruchai awaiting it, but it hardly had size enough to contain so much might. For an instant, Linden was struck by the strangeness of its gait. Its knees were back-bent like a bird's, and its feet were wide pads, giving it the ability to traverse sand with immense celerity and force. Then the Sandgorgon was almost upon Hergrom and Ceer; and she perceived other details.

  It had arms, but no hands. Its forearms ended in flat flexible stumps like prehensile battering rams-arms formed to contend with sand, to break stone.

  And it had no face. Its head was featureless except for the faint ridges of its skull beneath its hide and two covered slits like gills on either side.

  It appeared as violent and absolute as a force of nature. Watching it, Linden was no longer conscious of breathing, Her heart might have stopped. Even Covenant with all his wild magic could not have equalled this feral beast.

  Together, Hergrom and Ceer stepped out from the Sandwall, then separated so that the Sandgorgon could not attack them both at once.

  The creature shifted its impetus slightly. In a flash of white hide and fury, it charged straight at Hergrom.

  At the last instant, he spun out of its way. Unable to stop, the Sandgorgon crashed headlong into the wall.

  Linden felt the impact as if the entire Sandhold had shifted. Cracks leaped through the stone; chunks recoiled outward and thudded to the ground.

  Simultaneously, Ceer and Hergrom sprang for the creature's back. Striking with all their skill and strength, they hammered at its neck.

  It took the blows as if they were handfuls of sand. Spinning sharply, it slashed at them with its arms.

  Ceer ducked, evaded the strike. But one arm caught Hergrom across the chest, flung him away like a doll.

  None of them made a sound. Only their blows, their movements on the sand, articulated the combat.

  Surging forward, Ceer butted the beast's chin with such force that the Sandgorgon rebounded a step. Immediately, he followed, raining blows. But they had no effect. The beast caught its balance. Its back-bent knees flexed, preparing to spring.

  Ceer met that thrust with a perfectly timed hit at the creature's throat.

  Again the Sandgorgon staggered. But this time one of its arms came down on the Haruchai's shoulder. Dumbly, Linden's senses registered the breaking of bones. Ceer nearly fell.

  Too swiftly for any defence, the Sandgorgon raised one footpad and stamped at Ceer's leg.

  He sprawled helplessly, with splinters protruding from the wreckage of his thigh and knee. Blood spattered the sand around him.

  Seadreamer was at the edge of the parapet, straining to leap downward as if he believed he would survive the fall. Honninscrave and the First fought to restrain him.

  The gaddhi's giggling bubbled like the glee of a demon.

  Cail's fingers gripped Linden's arm as if he were holding her responsible.

  As Ceer fell, Hergrom returned to the combat. Running as hard as he could over the yielding surface, he leaped into the air, launched a flying kick at the Sandgorgon's head.

  The beast retreated a step to absorb the blow, then turned, tried to sweep Hergrom into its embrace. He dodged. Wheeling behind the Sandgorgon, he sprang onto its back. Instantly, he clasped his legs to its torso, locked his arms around its neck and squeezed. Straining every muscle, he clamped his forearm into the beast's throat, fought to throttle the creature.

  It flailed its arms, unable to reach him.

  Rant Absolain stopped giggling. Disbelief radiated from him like a cry.

  Linden forced herself against the corner of the parapet, clung to that pain. A soundless shout of encouragement stretched her mouth.

  But behind the beast's ferocity lay a wild cunning. Suddenly, it stopped trying to strike at Hergrom. Its knees bent as if it were crouching to the ground.

  Savagely, it hurled itself backward at the Sandwall.

  There was nothing Hergrom could do. He was caught between the Sandgorgon and the hard stone. Tremors like hints of earthquake shuddered through the wall.

  The beast stepped out of Hergrom's grasp, and he slumped to the ground. His chest had been crushed. For a moment, he continued to breathe in a wheeze of blood and pain, torturing his ruptured lungs, his pierced heart. As white and featureless as fate, the Sandgorgon regarded him as if wondering where to place the next blow.

  Then a spasm brought dark red fluid gushing from his mouth. Linden saw the thews of his life snap. He lay still.

  The Sandgorgon briefly confronted the wall as if wishing for the freedom to attack it. But the beast's release had ended.

  Turning away, it moved at a coerced run back toward its Doom. Shortly, it disappeared into the sand-trail it raised behind it.

  Linden's eyes bled tears. She felt that something inside her had perished. Her companions were stunned into silence; but she did not look at them. Her heart limped to the rhythm of Hergrom's name, iterating that sound as though there must have been something she could have done.

  When she blinked her sight clear, she saw that Rant Absolain had started to move away, taking his women and Guards with him. His chortling faded into the sunlight and the dry white heat.

  Kasreyn was nowhere on the Sandwall.

  Seventeen: Charade's End

  FOR a time that seemed as unanswerable as paralysis, Linden remained still. Kasreyn's absence-the fact that he had not stayed to watch the contest of the Sandgorgon-felt more terrible to her than the gaddhi's mirth. She knew that there were needs to be met, decisions to be made; but she was unable to recognize them. Hergrom's name ran along her pulse, numbing her to everything else.

  She nearly cried out when Covenant said like an augur, “Don't touch me.”

  Cail had released her; but the marks his fingers had left on her upper arm throbbed, echoing her heartbeat. He had dug his sternness into her flesh, engraved it on her bones.

  Then the First moved. She confronted Rire Grist. The suffusion of her gaze made her appear purblind. She spoke in a raw whisper, as if she could not contain her passion in any other way.

  “Bring us rope.”

  The Caitiffin's face wore a look of nausea. He appeared to feel a genuine dismay at Hergrom's fate. Perhaps he had never seen a Sandgorgon at work before. Or perhaps he understood that he might someday displease his masters and have a name of terror placed in his mind as punishment. There was sweat on his brows, and in his voice, as he muttered a command to one of the hustin.

  The Guard obeyed slowly. He snapped at it like a sudden cry, and it hastened away. In a short time, it came back carrying a second coil of heavy rope.

  At once, Honninscrave and Seadreamer took the line. With the practiced celerity of sailors, they secured it to the parapet, cast it outward. Though it seemed small in their hands, it was strong enough to support a Giant. First the Master, then Seadreamer slid down to the bloodied sand and to Ceer.

  Cail's touch impelled Linden forward. Numbly, she moved to the rope. She had no idea what she was doing. Wrapping her arms and legs around the line, she let her weight pull her after Honninscrave and Seadreamer.

  When she reached the gro
und, her feet fumbled in the sand. Hergrom's body slumped against the wall, accusing her. She could hardly force her futile legs to carry her toward Ceer.

  Cail followed her downward. Then came Brinn with Covenant slung over his shoulder. In a rush of iron grace, the First swarmed down the rope.

  Vain gazed over the parapet as if he were considering the situation. Then he, too, descended the line. At the same time, Findail melted out of the base of the Sandwall and reformed himself among the questers.

  Linden paid no heed to them. Stumbling to her knees at Ceer's side, she hunched over him and tried not to see the extremity of his pain.

  He said nothing. His visage held no expression. But perspiration ran from his forehead like droplets of agony.

  Perceptions seemed to fly at her face. Assailed by arid heat and vision, her eyes felt like ashes in their sockets. His shoulder was not too badly damaged. Only the clavicle was broken-a clean break. But his leg—

  Jesus Christ.

  Shards of bone mangled the flesh of his thigh and knee. He was losing blood copiously through the many wounds. She could not believe that he would ever walk again. Even if she had had access to a good hospital, x-rays, trained help, she might not have been able to save his leg. But those things belonged to the world she had lost-the only world she understood. She possessed nothing except the vulnerability which made her feel every fraction of his pain as if it were mapped explicitly in her own flesh.

  Groaning inwardly, she closed her eyes, sparing herself the sight of his hurt, his valour. He appalled her-and needed her. He needed her. And she had nothing to offer him except her acute and outraged percipience. How could she deny him? She had denied Brinn, and this was the result. She felt that she was in danger of losing everything as she murmured into the clenched silence of her companions, “I need a tourniquet. And a splint.”

  She heard a ripping noise. Brinn or Cail placed a long strip of cloth in her hands. At the same time, the First shouted up at Rire Grist, “We require a spear!”

  Working by touch, Linden knotted the cloth around Ceer's thigh above the damage, She pulled the tough material as tight as she could. Then she shifted back to his shoulder because that injury was so much less heinous and called for Cail to help her.

  Her hands guided his to the points of pressure and stress she required. While she monitored Ceer's collarbone with her fingers, Cail moved and thrust according to her instructions. Together, they manipulated the clavicle into a position where it could heal safely.

  She felt the Giants watching her intently, grimly. But she lacked the courage to open her eyes. She had to lock her jaw to keep from weeping in shared pain. Her nerves were being flayed by Ceer's hurt. Yet his need consumed every other consideration. With Cail and then Brinn beside her, she confronted his thigh again.

  As her hands explored the wreckage, she feared that the mute screams in his leg would become her screams, reaving her of all resolve. She squeezed her eyelids shut until the pressure made her head throb. But she was professionally familiar with shattered bones. The ruin of Ceer's knee was explicable to her. She knew what needed to be done.

  “I'm going to hurt you.” She could not silence the ache of her empathy. “Forgive me.”

  Guided by her percipience, she told Brinn and Cail what to do, then helped them do it.

  Brinn anchored Ceer's upper leg. Cail grasped Ceer's ankle.

  At Linden's word, Cail pulled, opening the knee. Then he twisted it to realign the splinters of bone.

  Ceer's breathing gasped through his teeth. Hard pieces of bone ground against each other. Sharp fragments tore new wounds around the joint. Linden felt everything in her own vitals and wanted to shriek. But she did not. She guided Cail's manipulations, pressed recalcitrant splinters back into place, staunched the oozing of blood. Her senses explored the ravaged territory of the wound, gauging what needed to be done next.

  Then she had done everything she could. Chips of bone still blocked the joint, and the menisci had been badly torn; but she could not reach those things-or the torn blood vessels, the mutilated nerves-without surgery. Given Ceer's native toughness and a sharp knife, surgery was theoretically possible. But it could not be done here, on the unclean sand. She let Cail release Ceer's ankle and demanded a splint.

  One of the Giants placed two smooth shafts of wood into her hands. Involuntarily, she looked at them and saw that they were sections of a spear. And Seadreamer had already unbraided a long piece of rope, thereby obtaining strands with which to bind the wood.

  For a moment longer, Linden held herself together. With Cail's help, she applied the splint. Then she removed the tourniquet.

  But after that her visceral distress became too strong for suppression. Stiffly, she crawled away from Ceer's pain. Sitting with her back against the Sandwall, she clasped her arms around her knees, hid her face, and tried to rock herself back under control. Her exacerbated nerves wailed at her like lost children; and she did not know how to bear it.

  Mistweave's plight had not hurt her like this. But she had not been to blame for it, though the fault for Covenant's condition had been hers then as it was now. And then she had not been so committed to what she was doing, to the quest and her own role in it-to the precise abandonment and exposure which Gibbon-Raver had told her would destroy both her and the world.

  Ceer's pain showed her just how much of herself she had lost.

  Yet as she bled for him she realised that she did not wish that loss undone. She was still a doctor, still dedicated to the one thing which had preserved her from the inbred darkness of her heritage. And now at least she was not fleeing, not denying. The pain was only pain, after all; and it slowly ebbed from her joints. Better this than paralysis. Or the unresolved hunger that was worse than paralysis.

  So when the First knelt before her, placed gentle hands on her shoulders, she met the Giant's gaze. One of the First's hands accidentally brushed the bruises which Cail had left on her arm. Shuddering, she opened herself to the First's concern.

  For a moment, her fearsome vulnerability and the First's arduous restraint acknowledged each other. Then the Swordmain stood, drawing Linden to her feet. Gruffly, like a refusal of tears, the First said to the company, “We must go.”

  Brinn and Cail nodded. They looked at Seadreamer; and he answered by stooping to Ceer, lifting the injured Haruchai carefully in his arms.

  They were all ready to begin the walk to the gate.

  Linden stared at them. Thickly, she asked, “What about Hergrom?”

  Brinn gazed at her as if he did not understand her question.

  “We can't just leave him here.” Hergrom had spent his life to save the company. His body slumped against the wall like a sacrifice to the Great Desert. His blood formed a dark stain around him.

  Brinn's flat eyes did not waver. “He failed.”

  The force of his absolute gaze stung her. His judgment was too severe; it was inhuman. Because she did not know any other way to repudiate it, she strode over the sand to strike at Brinn's detached countenance with all the weight of her arm.

  He caught the blow deftly, gripped her wrist for a moment with the same stone strength which had ground Cail's fingers into her flesh. Then he thrust down her hand, released her. Taking Covenant by the arm, he turned away from her.

  Abruptly, Honninscrave bent to pick up the ornament which Rant Absolain had dropped. The black sun of the medallion had been broken in half by Hergrom's foot. Honninscrave's eyes were rimmed with rue and anger as he handed the pieces to the First.

  She took them and crumbled them in one fist. The chain she snapped in two places. Then she hurled all the fragments out into the Great Desert, turned and started eastward around the curve of the Sandwall.

  Seadreamer and Honninscrave followed her. Brinn and Covenant followed them.

  After a moment, Linden, too, thrust herself into motion. Her wrist and upper arm ached. She was beginning to make new promises to herself.

  With Cail behind her, a
nd Vain and Findail behind Cail, she joined her companions, leaving Hergrom bereft of the dignity of care or burial by the simple fact that he had proven himself mortal.

  The outer face of the wall was long; and the sun beat down as if it rode the immobile tide of the dunes to pound against the company. The sand made every stride strenuous. But Linden had recoiled from Ceer's pain into decision. Hergrom was dead. Ceer needed her. She would have to perform a miracle of surgery to preserve the use of his leg. And Covenant moved a few paces ahead of her, muttering his ritual at blind intervals as if the only thing he could remember was leprosy. She had endured enough.

  At last, the Sandwall stopped curving. It became straight as its outer arm reached to join the wall which girdled Bhrathairain and the Harbour. In the middle of that section stood the gate the company sought. It admitted them to the open courtyard, where one of Bhrathairealm's fountains glistened in the sunlight.

  There the questers halted. To the right stood the gate which opened on the town; to the left, the entrance toward the Sandhold. The way back to Starfare's Gem seemed unguarded. But Rire Grist and his aide were waiting at the inner gate.

  Here, again, there were birds-here, and everywhere around Bhrathairain, but not in the proximity of the Sandhold. Perhaps the donjon had never fed them. Or perhaps they shied from the Kemper's arts.

  Unexpectedly, the Appointed spoke. His yellow eyes were hooded, concealing his desires. “Will you not now return to your dromond! This place contains naught but peril for you.”

  Linden and the Giants stared at him. His words appeared to strike a chord in the First. She turned to Linden, asking Findail's question mutely.

  “Do you think they'll let us leave?” Linden rasped. She trusted the Elohim as much as she did Kasreyn. “Did you see the Guards inside the wall when we came in? Grist is probably just waiting to give the order.” The First's eyes narrowed m acknowledgment; but still her desire to do something, anything, which might relieve her sense of helplessness was plain.