The One Tree t2cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Power.

  Impossibly upright amid conflagrations which threatened to break the Isle, she placed herself between Covenant and the One Tree.

  His fire scaled about him in whorls and coruscations. He looked like a white avatar of the father of nightmares. But he saw her. His howl made the roots of the rock shudder as he grabbed at her with wild magic, drew her inside his defences.

  She flung her arms around him and forced her face toward his. Mad ecstasy distorted his visage. Kevin must have worn that same look at the Ritual of Desecration. Focusing all the penetration of her senses, she tuned her urgency, her love, her self to a pitch that would touch him.

  “You've got to stop!”

  He was a figure of pure fire. The radiance of his bones was beyond mortality. But she pierced the blaze.

  “It's too much! You're going to break the Arch of Time!”

  Through the outpouring, she heard him scream. But she held herself against him. Her senses grappled for his flame, prevented him from striking out.

  “This is what Foul wants!”

  Driven by the strength she took from him, her voice reached him.

  She saw the shock as truth stabbed into him. She saw realization strike panic and horror across his visage. His worst nightmares reared up in front of him; his worst fears were fulfilled. He was poised on the precipice of the Despiser's victory. For one horrendous moment, he went on crying power as if in his despair he meant to tear down the heavens.

  Every star he consumed was another light lost to the universe, another place of darkness in the firmament of the sky.

  But she had reached him. His face stretched into a wail as if he had just seen everything he loved shatter. Then his features closed like a fist around a new purpose. Desperation burned from him. She felt his power changing. He was pulling it back, channelling it in another direction.

  At first, she did not question what he was doing. She saw only that he was regaining control. He had heard her. Clinging to him passionately, she felt his will assert itself against venom and disaster.

  But he did not silence his power. He altered it. Suddenly, wild magic flooded into her through his embrace. She went rigid with dismay and intuitive comprehension, tried to resist. But she was composed of nothing except flesh and blood and emotion; and he had changed in a moment from unchecked virulence to wild magic incarnate, deliberate mastery. Her grip on his fire was too partial and inexperienced to refuse him.

  His might bore her away. It did not touch her physically. It did not unbind her arms from him, did not harm her body. But it translated everything. Rushing through her like a torrent, it swept her out of herself, frayed her as if she were a mound of sand eroded by the sea, hurled her out among the stars.

  Night burst by her on all sides. The heavens writhed about her as if she were the pivot of their fate. Abysms of loneliness stretched out like absolute grief in every direction, contradicting the fact that she still felt Covenant in her arms, still saw the enclosure of the well. And those sensations were fading. She clung to them with frenzy; but wild magic burned them to ash in her grasp and cast her adrift. She floated away into fathomless midnight.

  Echoing without sound or hope, Covenant's voice rose after her:

  “Save my life!”

  She was hurtling toward a fire which became yellow and vicious as she approached it. It defined the night, pulling the dark around it so that it was defended on all sides by blackness.

  Then the blaze began to fade as if it had already consumed most of its fuel. As the flames shrank, she sprawled to the ground, lay on her back on a surface of stone. She was in two places at once. The wild magic continued to flow through her, linking her to Covenant, to the cavern of the One Tree. But at the same time she was elsewhere. Her head throbbed as if she had been struck a heavy blow behind one ear. When she tried to rise, the pain almost broke the fragile remnant of her link.

  With a fatal slowness, her sight squeezed itself into focus.

  She was lying on a rough plane of native rock beside the relict of a bonfire. The rock was in the bottom of a barren and abandoned hollow. Nothing obscured her view of the night sky. The stars were distant and inconceivable. But around the rims of the hollow she saw shrubs, brush, and trees, gaunt and spectral in the dark.

  She knew where she was, what Covenant was doing to her. Defying the pain, she heaved upright and faced the body stretched at her side.

  His body.

  He lay as if he had been crucified on the stone. But the wound was not in his hands or feet or side: it was in his chest. The knife jutted like a plea from the junction of his ribs and sternum. The viscid and dying pool of his life dominated the triangle of blood which had been painted on the rock.

  She felt that terrible amounts of time had passed, though she was only three heartbeats away from the cavern of the One Tree. The link was still open. Covenant was still pouring wild magic toward her, still striving to thrust her back into her old world. And that link kept her health-sense alight. When she looked at his body beside her-at the flesh outraged by the approach of death-she knew that he was alive.

  The blood oozing from around the knife, the internal bleeding, the loss of fluid were nearly terminal; but not yet, not yet. Somehow, the blade had missed his heart. Flickers of life ached in his lungs, quivered in the failing muscles of his heart, yearned in the passages of his brain. He could be saved. It was still medically feasible to save him.

  But before her own heart beat again, another perception altered everything.

  Nothing would save him unless he did to himself what he had just done to her-unless he came to reoccupy his dying body. While his spirit, the part of him which desired life, remained absent, his flesh could not rally. He was too far from any other kind of help, too far even from her medical bag. Only his will for life had a chance to sustain him. And his will still burned in the cavern of the One Tree, spending itself to preserve her from doom. He had sent her away as he had once sent Joan, so that his life would be forfeit instead of hers.

  First her father.

  Then her mother.

  Now Covenant.

  Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and white gold wielder, leper and lover, who had taught her to treasure the danger of being human.

  Dying here in front of her.

  Her heart lurched wildly. The link trembled. She started to protest, No! But before the word reached utterance she changed it into something else. As she scrambled to her feet, she clawed at the bond of power connecting her to Covenant. Her senses raced back along the current of wild magic. It was all she had. She had to make it serve her, wrest it from his grasp if necessary, anything rather than permit his death. Striving with every fraction of her strength, she cried out across the distance:

  “Covenant!”

  The sound fell stillborn in the woods. She did not know how to make him hear her. She clung to the link, but it resisted her service. If she had had the entire facilities and staff of a modern emergency room at her immediate disposal, she would not have been able to save him. His grip on the wild magic was too strong. The effort of mastering it had made him strong. Despair made him strong. And she had never wielded power before. In a direct contest for control of his might, she was no match for him.

  But her percipience still lived. She knew him in that way more intimately than she had ever known herself. She felt his fierce grief and extremity across the gap between worlds. She knew—

  Knew how to reach him.

  She did not stop to count the cost. There was no time. Madly, she hurled herself into the dying bonfire as if it were her personal caamora.

  For one splintered instant, those yellow flames leaped at her flesh. Harbingers of searing shot along her nerves.

  Then Covenant saw her peril. Instinctively, he tried to snatch her back.

  At once, she took hold of the link with every finger of her passion. Guided by her senses, she began to fight her way toward the source of the connection.

  The woods b
ecame as insubstantial as mist, then fell into shreds as the winds between the stars tugged through them. The stone under her feet evaporated into darkness. Covenant's prone form denatured, disappeared. She began to fall, as bright as a comet, into the endless chasm of the heavens.

  As she hurtled, she strove to muster words. You've got to come with me! It's the only way I can save you! But suddenly the power was quenched as if Covenant himself had been snuffed out. Her spiritual plummet among the stars seemed to become a physical plunge, a fall from a height which no human body might endure. Her heart wanted to scream, but there was no air, had never been any air, her lungs could not support the ether through which she dropped. She had gone off the edge of her fate. No cry remained which would have made any difference.

  Helpless to catch herself, she stumbled forward onto her face on the floor of the cavern. Her pulses raced, chest laboured. Reminders of the bonfire flushed over her skin. A moment passed before she was able to realize that she had suffered no hurt.

  Hands came to her aid. She needed the help. Her brain was giddy with transcendent dread. The stone seemed to buck and tremor under her. But the hands lifted her upright. She read the nature of their strength: they were Haruchai hands, Cail's hands. She welcomed them.

  But she was blind. The floor went on lurching. The Isle had begun to tremble like the presage of a convulsion. There was no light. The stars of the Worm's aura were gone. Covenant's fire was gone. Dazzled by powers and desperation, her eyes refused to adjust to the gloom. All her companions were invisible. They might have been slain.

  She fought to see through the Worm's unquiet ambience; but when she looked beyond Cail, she found nothing but Seadreamer's corpse. He lay in Honninscrave's embrace near the base of the One Tree as if his valiant bones had been burned to cinders.

  The sight wrung her. Cable Seadreamer, involuntary victim of Earth-Sight and muteness. He had done nothing with his life except give it away in an effort to save the people he most treasured. She had failed him, too.

  But then she became aware of Honninscrave himself, realised that the Master was breathing in great, raw hunks of loss. He was alive. That perception seemed to complete her transition, bringing her fully back into the company of her friends. The gloom macerated slowly as her eyes swam into focus.

  Softly, Pitchwife said, “Ah, Chosen. Chosen.” His voice was thick with rue.

  A short distance from Honninscrave and Seadreamer, Covenant sat spread-legged on the stone. He appeared unconscious of the violence building in the roots of the Isle. He faced the unattainable Tree with his back bowed as if he had broken his spine.

  The First and Pitchwife stood together, trapped between Covenant and Honninscrave by their inability to comfort either pain. She still gripped her sword, but it had become useless to her. Her husband's face was full of silent weeping.

  Vain remained a few paces away, wearing his black smile as if the wooden ruin of his right forearm meant nothing to him. Only Findail was nowhere to be seen. He had fled the crisis of Covenant's fire. Linden did not care if he never returned.

  Stiffly, she carried her appeal toward Covenant. Kneeling between his legs, she faced him and tried to lift the words into her throat. You've got to go back. But she was unable to speak. It was too late. His power-haunted gaze told her plainly that he already knew what she wanted to say.

  “I can't.” His voice sifted into the dark like a falling of ashes. “Even if I could stand it. Abandon the Land. Let Foul have his way.” His face was only a blur in the gloom, a pale smear from which all hope had been erased. “It takes too much power. I'd break the Arch.”

  Oh, Covenant!

  She had nothing else to give him.

  Twenty Seven: The Long Grief

  LINDEN could barely discern her companions through the dimness: Honninscrave and dead Seadreamer; the First and Pitchwife; Vain and Call. They stood around her like deeper shadows in the pervading dark. But Covenant was the one she watched. The image of him supine on the verge of death with that knife in his chest was as vivid to her as the etchwork of acid. She saw that face-the features acute with agony, the skin waxen and pallid-more clearly than the gaunt visage before her. Its vague shape appeared mortally imprecise, as if its undergirding bones had been broken-as if he were as broken as the Land which Lord Foul had restored to him, as broken as Joan. All the danger had gone out of him.

  But the company could not remain where it was. A sharper convulsion shook the stone, as if the Worm were nearly awake. A scattering of pebbles fell from the walls, filling the air with light echoes. There was little time left. Perhaps it would not be enough. Gently, Cail stooped to Covenant. “Ur-Lord, come. This Isle cannot hold. We must hasten for our lives.”

  Linden understood. The Worm was settling back to its rest; and those small movements might tear the Isle apart at any moment. She had failed at everything else; but this exigency was within her grasp. She rose to her feet, extended her hands to help Covenant.

  He refused her offer. For a moment, darkness blotted out his mien. When he spoke, his voice was muffled by defeat.

  “I should've broken the link. Before you had time to see. But I didn't have the courage to let you go. I can't bear it.”

  Yet he moved. In spite of everything, he heeded the company's need. Tortured and leprous, he climbed Call's support until he was upright.

  Another shock staggered the cavern. But Linden kept her balance alone.

  The First and Pitchwife went to Honninscrave. With firm care, they urged him erect. He would not release his brother. Bearing Seadreamer in his arms, he permitted himself to be nudged toward the ledge after Covenant and Linden.

  In silence, the questers trudged up out of the tomb of their dreams.

  Tremors threatened them repeatedly during that hard ascent. The ledge pitched as if it sought to shrug them back into the gulf. Vibrations made the stone quiver like wounded flesh. At intervals, hunks of rock fell, striking out sharp resonations which scaled upward like cries of bereavement. But Linden was not afraid of that. She was hardly aware of the exertion of the climb. She felt that she could count the last drops of blood as they seeped around the knife in Covenant's chest.

  When she gained the crest, looked out over the Isle and the wide sea, she was wanly surprised to see that the sun had fallen no lower than midafternoon. Surely the ruin of the quest had consumed more time than that? But it had not. Such damage was as sudden as an infarction. As abrupt as the collapse of the old man on the roadway into Haven Farm

  Slowly, irresistibly, the violence in the rock continued to build. As she started downward, she saw that the slopes were marked with new scars where boulders and outcroppings had fallen away. The old sea had swallowed all the rubble without a trace.

  The last throes of the Isle were rising. Though she was hardly able to walk without stumbling, she urged the company faster. It was her responsibility. Covenant was so Desecration-ridden, so despair-blind, that he would have plunged headlong if Cail had not supported him. She needed help herself; but Brinn was gone, the First and Pitchwife were occupied with Honninscrave, and Call's duty was elsewhere. So she carried her own weight and croaked at her companions for haste. As awkwardly as cripples, they raced the Worm's unrest downward.

  Vain followed them as if nothing had changed. But his right hand dangled from the dead wood of his transformed forearm. The band of the Staff of Law on his wrist clasped the boundary between flesh and bark.

  At last, they reached the longboat. Somehow, it had not been struck by any of the falling boulders. The companions lurched and thudded aboard as if they were in rout.

  As the First shoved the craft out into the water, the entire eyot jumped. A large section of the crest crumbled inward. The sea heaved into deep waves, setting the longboat a-dance. But it rode out the spasms unscathed. Then the First and Pitchwife took the oars and rowed through the sunlight toward Starfare's Gem.

  The next tremor toppled more of the Isle's crown. Wide pieces of the engirdling
reef sank. After that, the convulsions became almost constant, raising immense exhalations of dust like spume from the island's throat. Impelled by heavy seas, the longboat moved swiftly to the side of the Giantship. In a short time, the company gained the decks. Everyone gathered along the port rail to watch the cairn of the One Tree go down.

  It sank in a last tremendous upheaval. Chunks of the Isle jumped like flames as its foundations shattered. Then all the rock settled around the Worm's new resting-place; and the sea rushed into the gap. The waters rose like a great geyser, spread outward in deep undulations which made the dromond roll from side to side. But that was the end. Even the reef was gone. Nothing remained to mark the area except bubbles which broke the surface and then faded, leaving azure silence in their wake.

  Slowly, the spectators turned back to their ship. When Linden looked past Vain toward Covenant, she saw Findail standing with him. She wanted to be angry at the Elohim, would have welcomed any emotion which might have sustained her. But the time for such things had passed. No expostulation would bring back Covenant's hope. The lines engraving the Appointed's face were as deep as ever; but now they seemed like scars of pity.

  “I cannot ease your sorrow,” he said, speaking so softly that Linden barely heard him. “That attempt was made, and it failed. But one fear I will spare you. The One Tree is not destroyed. It is a mystery of the Earth. While the Earth endures, it too will endure in its way. Perhaps your guilts are indeed as many as you deem them — but that is one you need not bear.”

  Findail's unexpected gentleness made Linden's eyes blur. But the pained slump of Covenant's shoulders, the darkness of his gaze, showed that he had passed beyond the reach of solace. In a voice like the last drops of blood, he replied, “You could've warned me. I almost-” The vision of what he had nearly done clogged his throat. He swallowed as if he wanted to curse and no longer had the strength. “I'm sick of guilt.”