The One Tree

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  When Cail came to speak with her, she did not turn her head, did not let him see her forlornness, until he demanded, “Linden Avery, you must.”

  At that, she rounded on him. He was sweating faintly. Even his Haruchai flesh was not immune to this heat. But his manner denied any discomfort. He seemed so secure in his rectitude mat she could not hold herself from snapping at him, “No. You swore to protect him. I didn’t.”

  “Chosen.” He used her title with a tinge of asperity. “We have done what lies within our reach. But none can approach him. His fire lashes out at all who draw near. Brinn has been burned—but that is nothing. Diamondraught will speed his healing. Consider instead the Giants. Though they can withstand fire, they cannot bear the force of his white ring. When the First sought to near him, she was nigh thrown from the deck. And the Anchormaster, Sevinhand, also assayed the task. When he regained consciousness, he named himself fortunate that he had suffered no more than a broken arm.”

  Burned, Linden thought dumbly. Broken. Her hands writhed against each other. She was a doctor; she should already have gone to treat Brinn and Sevinhand. But even at this distance Covenant’s illness assaulted her sanity. She had made no decision. Her legs would not take one step in that direction. She could not help him without violating him. She had no other power. That was what she had become.

  When she did not speak, Cail went on, “It is a clean break, which the Storesmaster is able to tend. I do not speak of that. I desire you to understand only that we are surpassed. We cannot approach him. Thus it falls to you. You must succor him.

  “We believe that he will not strike at you. You are his nearest companion—a woman of his world. Surely even in his madness he will know you and withhold his fire. We have seen that he holds you in his heart.”

  In his heart? Linden almost cried out. But still Cail addressed her as if he had been charged with a speech and meant to deliver it in the name of his duty.

  “Yet perhaps in that we are misled. Perhaps he would strike at you also. Yet you must make the attempt. You are possessed of a sight which no Haruchai or Giant can share or comprehend. When the Sunbane-sickness came upon you, you perceived that voure would restore you. When your ankle was beyond all other aid, you guided its setting.” The demand in his expressionless mien was as plain as a fist. “Chosen, you must gaze upon him. You must find the means to succor him.”

  “Must?” she returned huskily. Cail’s flat insistence made her wild. “You don’t know what you’re saying. The only way I can help him is go into him and take over. Like the Sunbane. Or a Raver. It would be bad enough if I were as innocent as a baby. But what do you think I’ll turn into if I get that much power?”

  She might have gone on, might have cried at him, And he’ll hate me for it! He’ll never trust me again! Or himself. But the simple uselessness of shouting at Cail stopped her. Her intensity seemed to have no purpose. His uncompromising visage leeched it away from her. Instead of protesting further, she murmured dimly, “I’m already too much like Gibbon.”

  Cail’s gaze did not waver from her face. “Then he will die.”

  I know. God help me. She turned from the Haruchai, hung her arms over the cross-supports of the rail to keep herself from sagging to her knees. Possess him?

  After a moment, she felt Cail withdrawing toward the afterdeck. Her hands twisted against each other as if their futility threatened to drive them mad. She had spent so many years training them, teaching them to heal, trusting them. Now they were good for nothing. She could not so much as touch Covenant.

  Starfare’s Gem remained becalmed throughout the day. The heat baked down until Linden thought that her bones would melt; but she could not resolve the contradictions in her. Around the ship, the Giants were strangely silent. They seemed to wait with bated breath for Covenant’s eruptions of fire, his ranting shouts. No hint of wind stirred the sails. At times, she wanted to fall overboard—not to immerse herself in the Sea’s coolness, though anything cool would have been bliss to her aching nerves—but simply to break the unrelieved stillness of the water. Through the stone, she could feel Covenant’s delirium worsening.

  At noon and again at eventide, Cail brought her food. He performed this task as if no conflict between them could alter his duty; but she did not eat. Though she had not taken one step toward Covenant, she shared his ordeal. The same rack of venom and madness on which he was stretched tortured her as well. That was her punishment for failure—to participate in the anguish she feared to confront.

  The old man on Haven Farm had said, You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world. Not fail? she ached to herself. Good God! As for love, she had already denied it. She did not know how to turn her life around.

  So the day ended, and later the waxing moon began to ascend over the lifeless Sea, and still she stood at the railing on the long foredeck, staring sightlessly into the blank distance. Her hands knotted together and unknotted like a nest of snakes. Sweat darkened the hair at her temples, drew faint lines down through the erosions which marked her face; but she paid no heed. The black water lay unmoving and benighted, as empty of life as the air. The moon shone as if it were engrossed in its own thoughts; but its reflection sprawled on the flat surface like a stillborn. High above her, the sails hung limp among their shrouds, untouched by any rumor or foretaste of wind. Again and again, Covenant’s voice rose ranting into the hot night. Occasional white lightning paled the stars. Yet she did not respond, though she knew he could not heal himself. The Despiser’s venom was a moral poison, and he had no health-sense to guide his fire. Even if his power had been hers to wield as she willed, she might not have been able to burn out that ill without tearing up his life by the roots.

  Then Pitchwife came toward her. She heard his determination to speak in the rhythm of his stride. But when she turned her head to him, the sight of her flagrant visage silenced him. After a moment, he retreated with a damp sheen of moonlight or tears in his misshapen eyes.

  She thought then that she would be left alone. But soon she felt another Giant looming nearby. Without looking at him, she recognized Seadreamer by his knotted aura. He had come to share his muteness with her. He was the only Giant who suffered anything comparable to her vision, and the pervading sadness of his mood held no recrimination. Yet after a time his silence seemed to pull at her, asking for answers.

  “Because I’m afraid.” His muteness enabled her to speak. “It terrifies me.

  “I can understand what Covenant’s doing. His love for the Land—” She envied Covenant his passion, his accessible heart. She had nothing like it. “I’d do anything to help him. But I don’t have that kind of power.”

  Then she could not stop; she had to try to explain herself. Her voice slipped out into the night without touching the air or the Sea. But her companion’s gentle presence encouraged her.

  “It’s all possession. Lord Foul possessed Joan to make Covenant come to the Land.” Joan’s face had worn a contortion of predatory malice which still haunted Linden. She could not forget the woman’s thirst for Covenant’s blood. “A Raver possessed Marid to get that venom into him. A Raver possessed the na-Mhoram of the Clave so that the Clave would serve the Sunbane. And the Sunbane itself! Foul is trying to possess the Law. He wants to make himself the natural order of the Earth. Once you start believing in evil, the greatest evil there is is possession. It’s a denial of life—of humanity. Whatever you possess loses everything. Just because you think you’re doing it for reasons like pity or help doesn’t change what it is. I’m a doctor, not a Raver.”

  She tried to give her insistence the force of affirmation; but it was not true enough for that.

  “He needs me to go into him. Take over. Control him so he can drink some diamondraught, stop righting the people who want to help him. But that’s evil. Even if I’m trying to save him.” Struggling to put the truth into words, she said, “To do it, I’d have to take his power away from him.”

  She was
pleading for Seadreamer’s comprehension. “When I was in Revelstone, Gibbon touched me. I learned something about myself then.” The na-Mhoram had told her she was evil. That was the truth. “There’s a part of me that wants to do it. Take over him. Take his power. I don’t have any of my own, and I want it.” Want it. All her life, she had striven for power, for effectiveness against death. For the means to transcend her heritage—and to make restitution. If she had possessed Covenant’s power, she would have gladly torn Gibbon soul from body in the name of her own crime. “That’s what paralyzes me. I’ve spent my life trying to deny evil. When it shows up, I can’t escape it.” She did not know how to escape the contradiction between her commitment to life and her yearning for the dark might of death. Her father’s suicide had taught her a hunger she had satisfied once and dreaded to face again. The conflict of her desires had no answer. In its own way, Gibbon-Raver’s touch had been no more horrible than her father’s death; and the black force of her memories made her shiver on the verge of crying.

  “Yet you must aid him.”

  The hard voice pierced Linden. She turned sharply, found herself facing the First of the Search. She had been so caught up in what she was saying to Seadreamer, so locked into herself, that she had not felt the First’s approach.

  The First glared at her sternly. “I grant that the burden is terrible to you. That is plain.” She bore herself like a woman who had made a fierce decision of her own. “But the Search has been given into his hands. It must not fail.”

  With a brusque movement, she drew her broadsword, held it before her as though she meant to enforce Linden’s compliance with keen iron. Linden pressed her back against the rail in apprehension; but the First bent down, placed her glaive on the deck between them. Then she drew herself erect, fixed Linden with the demand of her stare. “Have you the strength to wield my blade?”

  Involuntarily Linden looked down at the broadsword. Gleaming densely in the moonlight, it appeared impossibly heavy.

  “Have you the strength to lift it from where it lies?”

  Linden wrenched her eyes back to the First in dumb protest.

  The Swordmain nodded as if Linden had given her the reply she sought. “Nor have I the insight to act against the Giantfriend’s illness. You are Linden Avery the Chosen. I am the First of the Search. We cannot bear each other’s burdens.”

  Her gaze shed midnight into Linden’s upturned face. “Yet if you do not shoulder the lot which has befallen you, then I swear by my glaive that I will perform whatever act lies within my strength. He will not accept any approach. Therefore I will risk my people, and Starfare’s Gem itself, to distract him. And while he strikes at them, with this sword I will sever the envenomed arm from his body. I know no other way to rid him of that ill—and us of the peril of his power. If fortune smiles upon us, we will be able to staunch the wound ere his life is lost.”

  Sever? Sudden weakness flooded through Linden. If the first succeeded—! In a flash of vision, she saw that great blade hacking like an execution at Covenant’s shoulder. And blood. Dark under the waxing moon, it would gush out almost directly from his heart. If it were not stopped in an instant, nothing could save him. She was a world away from the equipment she would need to give him transfusions, suture the wound, keep his heart beating until his blood pressure was restored. That blow could be as fatal as the knife-thrust which had once impaled his chest.

  The back of her head struck the cross-support of the railing as she sank to the deck; and for a moment pain labored in the bones of her skull. Sever? He had already lost two fingers to surgeons who knew no other answer to his illness. If he lived—She groaned. Ah, if he lived, how could she ever meet his gaze to tell him that she had done nothing—that she had stood by in her cowardice and allowed his arm to be cut away?

  “No.” Her hands covered her face. Her craven flesh yearned to deny what she was saying. He would have reason to hate her if she permitted the First’s attempt. And to hate her forever if she saved his life at the cost of his independent integrity. Was she truly this hungry for power? “I’ll try.”

  Then Cail was at her side. He helped her to her feet. As she leaned on his shoulder, he thrust a flask into her hands. The faint smell of diluted diamondraught reached her. Fumbling weakly, she pulled the flask to her mouth and drank.

  Almost at once, she felt the liquor exerting its analystic potency. Her pulse carried life back into her muscles. The pain in her head withdrew to a dull throbbing at the base of her neck. The moonlight seemed to grow firmer as her vision cleared.

  She emptied the flask, striving to suck strength from it—any kind of strength, anything which might help her withstand the virulence of the venom. Then she forced herself into motion toward the afterdeck.

  Beyond Foodfendhall, she came into the light of lanterns. They had been placed along the roof of the housing and around the open deck so that the Giants and Haruchai could watch Covenant from a relatively safe distance. They shed a yellow illumination which should have comforted the stark night. But their light reached upward to the wreckage of sails and rigging. And within the pool they cast, all the blood and bodies of the rats had been burned away. Scars of wild magic marked the stone like lines of accusation pointing toward Covenant’s rigid anguish.

  The sight of him was almost too much for Linden. From head to foot, he looked force-battered, as if he had been beaten with truncheons. His eyes were wide and staring; but she could see no relict of awareness or sanity in them. His lips had been torn by the convulsive gnashing of his teeth. His forehead glistened with extreme sweat. In his illness, the beard which had formerly given him a heuristic aspect, an air of prophecy, now looked like a reification of his leprosy. And his right arm—

  Hideously black, horrendously swollen, it twitched and grasped beside him, threatening his friends and himself with every wince. The dull silver of his wedding band constricted his second finger like blind cruelty biting into his defenseless flesh. And at his shoulder, the arm of his T-shirt was stretched to the tearing point. Fever radiated from the swelling as if his bones had become fagots for the venom.

  That emanation burned against Linden’s face even though she stood no closer to him than the verge of the lantern-light. He might already have died if he had not been able to vent the pressure of the poison through his ring. That release was all that kept his illness within bounds his flesh could bear.

  Unsteadily she gestured for Cail to retreat. Her hands shook like wounded birds. He hesitated; but Brinn spoke, and Cail obeyed. The Giants held themselves back, locking their breath behind their teeth. Linden stood alone in the margin of the light as if it were the littoral of a vast danger.

  She stared at Covenant. The scars on the deck demonstrated beyond any argument that she would never get near enough to touch him. But that signified nothing. No laying on of hands could anele his torment. She needed to reach him with her soul. Take hold of him, silence his defenses long enough to allow some diamondraught to be poured down his throat. Possess him.

  Either that or tear his power from him. If she was strong enough. Her health-sense made such an attempt feasible. But he was potent and delirious; and nothing in her life had prepared her to believe that she could wrestle with him directly for control of his ring. If she failed, he might kill her in the struggle. And if she succeeded —

  She decided to aim herself against his mind. That seemed to be the lesser evil.

  Trembling she fought her visceral paresis, compelled her tightened legs to take two steps into the light. Three. There she stopped. Sinking to the stone, she sat with her knees hugged protectively against her chest. The becalmed air felt dead in her lungs. A waifish voice in the back of her brain pleaded for mercy or flight.

  But she did not permit herself to waver. She had made her decision. Defying her mortality, her fear of evil and possession and failure, she opened her senses to him.

  She began at his feet, hoping to insinuate herself into his flesh, sneak past his defenses
. But her first penetration almost made her flee. His sickness leaped the gap to her nerves like ghoul-fire, threatening her self-mastery. For a moment, she remained frozen in fear.

  Then her old stubbornness came back to her. It had made her who she was. She had dedicated her life to healing. If she could not use medicine and scalpel, she would use whatever other tools were available. Squeezing her eyes shut to block out the distraction of his torment, she let her perceptions flow up Covenant’s legs toward his heart.

  His fever grew in her as her awareness advanced. Her pulse labored; paresthesia flushed across her skin; the ice of deadened nerves burned in her toes, sent cramps groping through her arches into her calves. She was being sucked toward the abyss of his venom. Blackness crowded the night, dimming the lanterns around her. Power—she wanted power. Her lungs shared his shuddering. She felt in her own chest the corrosion which gnawed at his heart, making the muscle flaccid, the beat limp. Her temples began to ache.

  He was already a wasteland, and his illness and power ravaged her. She could hardly hold back the horror pounding at the back of her thoughts, hardly ignore the self-protective impetus to abandon this mad doom. Yet she went on creeping through him, studying the venom for a chance to spring at his mind.

  Suddenly a convulsion knotted him. Her shared reactions knocked her to the deck. Amid the roil of his delirium, she felt him surging toward power. She was so open to him that any blast would sear through her like a firestorm.

  Desperation galvanized her resolve. Discarding stealth, she hurled her senses at his head, tried to dive into his brain.

  For an instant, she was caught in the throes of wild magic as he thrashed toward an explosion. Images whirled insanely into her: the destruction of the Staff of Law; men and women being bled like cattle to feed the Banefire; Lena and rape; the two-fisted knife-blow with which he had slain a man she did not know; the slashing of his wrists. And power—white fire which crashed through the Clave, turned Santonin and the Stonemight to tinder, went reaving among the Riders to garner a harvest of blood. Power. She could not control him. He shredded her efforts as if her entire being and will were made of brittle old leaves. In his madness, he reacted to her presence as if she were a Raver.