The One Tree

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  That responsibility gave Linden what she needed. Animated by preterite stubbornness, she lurched down the hillside to find if Seadreamer had been harmed.

  He was struggling to his feet. His eyes were wide and stunned, confused by Earth-Sight. He reeled as if he had lost all sense of balance. When Honninscrave hastened to his side, he clung to the Master’s shoulder as if it were the only stable point in a breaking world. But Linden’s percipience found no evidence of serious physical hurt. Yet the emotional damage was severe. Something in him had been torn from its moorings by the combined force of his examination, the loss of the hope his brother had conceived for him, and Covenant’s plight. He was caught in straits for which all relief had been denied; and he bore his Earth-Sight as if he knew that it would kill him.

  This also was something Linden could not cure. She could only witness it and mutter curses that had no efficacy.

  Most of the bells had receded into the background, but two remained nearby. They were arguing together, satisfaction against rue. Their content was accessible now, but Linden no longer had any wish to make out the words. She had had enough of Chant and Daphin.

  Yet the two Elohim came together up the eftmound toward her, and she could not ignore them. They were her last chance. When they faced her, she aimed her bitterness straight into Daphin’s immaculate green gaze.

  “You didn’t have to do that. You could’ve told us where the One Tree is. You didn’t have to possess him. And then leave him like that.”

  Chant’s hard eyes held a gleam of insouciance. His inner voice sparkled with relish.

  But Daphin’s mind had a sad and liquid tone as she returned Linden’s glare. “Sun-Sage, you do not comprehend our Würd. There is a word in your tongue which bears a somewhat similar meaning. It is ‘ethic.’ ”

  Jesus God! Linden rasped in sabulous denial. But she kept herself still.

  “In our power,” Daphin went on, “many paths are open to us which no mortal may judge or follow. Some are attractive—others, distasteful. Our present path was chosen because it offers a balance of hope and harm. Had we considered only ourselves, we would have selected a path of greater hope, for its severity would have fallen not upon us but upon you. But we have determined to share with you the cost. We risk our hope. And also that which is more precious to us—life, and the meaning of life. We risk trust.

  “Therefore some among us”—she did not need to refer openly to Chant—“urged another road. For who are you, that we should hazard trust and life upon you? Yet our Würd remains. Never have we sought the harm of any life. Finding no path of hope which was not also a path of harm, we chose the way of balance and shared cost. Do not presume to judge us, when you conceive so little the import of your own acts. The fault is not ours that Sun-Sage and ring-wielder came among us as separate beings.”

  Oh, hell, Linden muttered. She had no heart left to ask Daphin what price the Elohim were paying for Covenant’s emptiness. She could think of no commensurate expense. And the timbre of the bells told her that Daphin would give no explicit answer. She did not care to waste any more of her scant strength on arguments or expostulations. She wanted nothing except to turn her back on the Elohim, get Covenant out of this place.

  As if in reply, Chant said, “In good sooth, it is past time. Were the choice in my hands, your expulsion from Elemesnedene would long since have silenced your ignorant tongue.” His tone was nonchalant; but his eyes shone with suppressed glee and cunning. “Does it please your pride to depart now, or do you wish to utter more folly ere you go?”

  Clearly Daphin chimed:

  —Chant, this does not become you.

  But he replied:

  —I am permitted. They can not now prevent us.

  Linden’s shoulders hunched, unconsciously tensing in an effort to strangle the intrusion in her mind. But at that moment, the First stepped forward. One of her hands rested on the hilt of her broadsword. She had leashed herself throughout the Elohimfest; but she was a trained Swordmain, and her face now wore an iron frown of danger and battle. “Elohim, there remains one question which must be answered.”

  Linden stared dumbly at the First. She felt that nothing remained to the company except questions; but she had no idea which one the First meant.

  The First spoke as if she were testing her blade against an unfamiliar opponent. “Perhaps you will deign to reveal what has become of Vain?”

  Vain?

  For an instant, Linden quailed. Too much had happened. She could not bear to think about another perfidy. But there was no choice. She would crack if she did not keep moving, keep accepting the responsibility as It came.

  She cast a glance around the eftmound; but she already knew that she would see no sign of the Demondim-spawn. In a whirl of recollection, she realized that Vain had never come to the Elohimfest. She had not seen him since the company had separated to be examined. No: she had not seen him since the expulsion of the Haruchai. At the time, his absence had troubled her unconsciously; but she had not been able to put a name to her vague sense of incompleteness.

  Trembling suddenly, she faced Chant. He had said as clearly as music, They can not now prevent us. She had assumed that he referred to Covenant; but now his veiled glee took on other implications.

  “That’s what you were doing.” Comprehension burned through her. “That’s why you provoked Cail—why you kept trying to pick fights with us. To distract us from Vain.” And Vain had walked into the snare with his habitual undiscriminating blankness.

  Then she thought again, No. That’s not right. Vain had approached the clachan with an air of excitement, as if the prospect of it pleased him. And the Elohim had ignored him from the beginning, concealing their intent against him.

  “What in hell do you want with him?”

  Chant’s pleasure was plain. “He was a peril to us. His dark makers spawned him for our harm. He was an offense to our Würd, directed with great skill and malice to coerce us from our path. This we will never endure, just as we have not endured your anile desires. We have imprisoned him.

  “We wrought covertly,” he went on like laughter, “to avoid the mad ire of your ring-wielder. But now that peril has been foiled. Your Vain we have imprisoned, and no foolish beseechment or petty mortal indignation will effect his release.” His eyes shone. “Thus the umbrage you have sought to cast upon us is recompensed. Consider the justice of your loss and be still.”

  Linden could not bear it. Masking her face with severity so that she would not betray herself, she sprang at him.

  He stopped her with a negligent gesture, sent her reeling backward. She collided with Covenant; and he sprawled to the hard ground, making no effort to soften the impact. His face pressed the dirt.

  The Giants had not moved. They had been frozen by Chant’s gesture. The First fought to draw her falchion. Seadreamer and Honninscrave tried to attack. But they were held motionless.

  Linden scrambled to Covenant’s side, heaved him upright. “Please.” She pleaded with him uselessly, as if Chant’s power had riven her of her wits. “I’m sorry. Wake up. They’ve got Vain.”

  But he might as well have been deaf and senseless. He made no effort to clean away the dirt clinging to his slack lips.

  Emptily he responded to impulses utterly divorced from her and the Giants and the Elohim:

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Cradling him, she turned to appeal one last time to Daphin’s compassion. Tears streaked her face.

  But Chant forestalled her. “It is enough,” he said sternly. “Now begone.”

  At that moment, he took on the stature of his people. His stance was grave and immitigable. She receded from him; but as the distance between them increased, he grew in her sight, confusing her senses so that she seemed to fall backward into the heavens. For an instant, he shone like the sun, burning away her protests. Then he was the sun, and she caught a glimpse of blue sky before the waters of the fountain covered her like weeping.

  She nea
rly lost her balance on the steep facets of the travertine. Covenant’s weight dragged her toward a fall. But at once Cail and Brinn came leaping through the spray to her aid. The water in their hair sparkled under the midday sun as if they—or she—were still in the process of transformation between Elemesnedene and the outer maidan.

  The suddenness of the change dizzied her. She could not find her balance behind the sunlight as the Haruchai helped her and Covenant down the slope, through the gathering waters to dry ground. They did not speak, expressed no surprise; but their mute tension shouted at her from the contact of their hard hands. She had sent them away.

  The sun seemed preternaturally bright. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the featureless lumination of Elemesnedene. Fiercely she scrubbed at her face, trying to clear away the water and the glare as if she wanted to eradicate every suggestion of tears or weeping from her visage.

  But Brinn caught hold of her wrists. He stood before her like an accusation. Ceer and Hergrom braced Covenant between them.

  The four Giants had emerged from the trough around the fountain. They stood half-dazed in the tall yellow grass of the maidan as if they had just wandered out of a dream which should not have been a nightmare. The First clutched her broadsword in both fists, but it was of no use to her. Pitchwife’s deformity appeared to have been accentuated. Seadreamer and Honninscrave moved woodenly together, linked by their pain.

  But Brinn did not permit Linden to turn away. Inflectionlessly he demanded, “What harm has been wrought upon the ur-Lord?”

  She had no answer to the accusation in his stare. She felt that her sanity had become uncertain. To herself, she sounded like a madwoman as she responded irrelevantly, “How long were we in there?”

  Brinn rejected the importance of her question with a slight shake of his head. “Moments only. We had hardly ceased our attempts to reenter the clachan when you returned.” His fingers manacled her. “What harm has been wrought upon the ur-Lord?”

  Oh my God, she groaned. Covenant so sorely damaged. Vain lost. Gifts refused. Moments only? It was true: the sun had scarcely moved at all since her last glimpse of it before entering Elemesnedene. That so much pain could have been committed in such a little time!

  “Let me go.” The plaint of a lorn and frightened child. “I’ve got to think.”

  For a moment, Brinn did not relent. But then Pitchwife came to her side. His misshapen eyes yearned on her behalf. In a hobbled tone, he said, “Release her. I will answer as best I may.”

  Slowly Brinn unlocked his fingers; and Linden slumped into the grass.

  She huddled there with her face hidden against her knees. Old, familiar screams echoed in her, cries which no one had been able to hear until long after her father had bled to death. Tears squeezed from her eyes like involuntary self-recrimination.

  The voices of her companions passed back and forth over her head. Pitchwife began to recount the events in Elemesnedene; but shortly the demand for brevity dismayed his Giantish instincts, and he trailed off into directionless protests, The First took the task from him. Tersely she detailed what she knew of Covenant’s examination, then described the Elohimfest. Her account was succinct and stark. Her tone said plainly that she, like Pitchwife, ached for a full and formal telling. But this maidan—with the Elohim so near at hand—was no place for such a tale; and she withheld it sternly. She related how the location of the One Tree had been revealed and what price Covenant had paid for that vision. Then she stiffened herself to her conclusion.

  “Vain the Elohim have imprisoned. It is their word that he is perilous to them—a threat directed against them across the seas by those who made him. They will not suffer his release. Mayhap they have already taken his life.”

  There she fell silent; and Linden knew that nothing else remained to be said. She could not hope for any inspiration to rescue her from her burdens. As if she knew what they were thinking, she watched while Ceer and Hergrom splashed back to the travertine slopes of the fountain, attempting once again to enter Elemesnedene. But the way was closed to them. It had been closed to all the company, and there was nothing else left to be done. Yet when the two Haruchai retreated to the maidan, the water seemed to gleam on the surface of their stubbornness; and she saw with a groan of recognition that she would have to fight them as well. They had not forgiven her for sending them out of Elemesnedene.

  She tried to rise to her feet; but for a while she could not. The weight of decision held her down. Who was she, that she should try to take Covenant’s place at the head of the quest? Gibbon-Raver had promised her an outcome of anguish and ruin.

  But her companions were asking themselves how they could force or trick their way back into the clachan. Though she felt that she was going crazy, she seemed to be the only sane one among them. And she had already accepted her role. If she could not at least stand loyal to herself, to the decisions she had made and the people she cared about, then everything she had already been and borne came to nothing.

  Clinching her long intransigence, she interrupted the company by climbing upright. Then she muttered, “There’s nothing more we can do here. Let’s get going.”

  They were struck silent as if she had shocked them. They glanced among themselves, wondering at her—at her willingness to abandon Vain, or at her attempt to command them. The First had sheathed her blade, but she showed her desire for battle in every muscle. Honninscrave and Seadreamer had found their way past pain into anger. Even Pitchwife had become enthusiastic for combat. And the Haruchai stood poised as if they were looking for a place to hurl violence.

  “Don’t touch me,” Covenant answered. The abysm behind his eyes made him look like a blind man. His reiterated warning was the only evidence that he retained any vestige of mind at all.

  “I mean it.” Linden’s tongue was thick with despair; but she knew that if she recanted now she would never be able to stop fleeing. “There’s nothing we can do for Vain. Let’s get back to the ship.”

  “Chosen.” The First’s voice was as keen as iron. “We are Giants. Whatever his purpose, this Vain is our companion. We do not blithely turn from the succor of any companion.” Linden started to object; but the Swordmain cut her off. “Also, we have been told that he was given to Covenant Giantfriend by the Dead of Andelain. By a Giant of the Lost—by Saltheart Foamfollower, the Pure One of the sur-jheherrin. Him we have beheld in the opening of Covenant’s mind.

  “We will not see such a gift lost. Though we do not comprehend him, we conceive that the gifts given to Covenant by his Dead are vital and necessary. Vain must be recovered.”

  Linden understood. The Elohim had planted a seed of possibility, and its fruit was apparent in the gazes of her companions. That she should take Covenant’s ring and use it.

  She shook her head. That would be a violation as fundamental as any rape. His ring was his peril and his hope, and she would not take it from him. Its power meant too much to her.

  And she had other reasons to deny the idea. Covenant’s plight could wait, at least until the company was safely away from this place; but Vain’s could not. What the Demondim-spawn needed from her was not what it appeared to be.

  To the First, she said flatly, “No.” In this, at least, she knew who she was. “It isn’t up to you.”

  “I am the First—” began the Swordmain.

  “It would’ve been Covenant’s decision,” Linden went on severely, clamping herself rigid with all her will, “but he’s in no condition. That leaves me.”

  She could not explain herself for fear the Elohim would hear her and take action. They were surely able to hear anything they desired, uncover any purpose they chose. So she invented reasons as if she knew what she was talking about.

  “You can’t do it. He’s so important because he comes from outside. Like the white gold. You don’t. We wouldn’t be here at all if the job could be done by anybody else. You can’t take his place,” she insisted. “I’m going to, whether I can or not.

  “A
nd I say we’re going to leave. Let Vain take care of himself. We don’t even know why he was given to Covenant. Maybe this is the reason. To get him into Elemesnedene, so he can do whatever he was created for. I don’t know, and I don’t care. We have what we came to get. And I don’t want to keep Covenant here. They’re after his ring. I’ll be damned if we’re going to stand around and let them hurt him again.”

  The First replied with a perplexed frown, as though Linden’s stability had become a matter of open doubt. But Brinn showed no doubt. In a voice like stone, he said, “We know nothing of these questions. Our ignorance was thrust upon us when we sought to serve the promise we have given the ur-Lord.” His accusation was implicit. “We know only that he has been harmed when he should have been in our care. And Vain is his, given to him in aid of his quest. For that reason alone, we must stand by the Demondim-spawn.

  “Also,” he continued inflexibly, “you have become a question in our sight. Vain made obeisance to you when you were redeemed from Revelstone. And he it was who strove to bear you from the peril of the graveling and the Sunbane-sickness. Perchance it was he who brought the sur-jheherrin to our aid against the lurker, in your name. Do you lack all wish to serve those who have served you?”

  Linden wanted to cry out at his words. He rubbed them like salt into her failures. But she clung to her purpose until the knuckles of her will whitened. “I understand what you’re saying.” Her voice quivered, deserted by the flat dispassion which she had tried for so long to drill into herself. “But you can’t get in there. They’ve closed us out. And we don’t have any way to make them change their minds. Covenant is the only one they were ever afraid of, and now they don’t have that to worry about.” If Covenant had chosen that moment to utter his blank refrain, her control might have snapped. But he was mercifully silent, lost in the absence of his thoughts. “Every minute we stay here, we’re taking the chance they might decide to do something worse.”