The One Tree

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  At times, she thought that Vain was the only member of the Search who had not been changed by Elemesnedene. He stood near the rail of the afterdeck on the precise spot where he had climbed aboard. The Giants had to work around him; he did not deign to notice that he was in their way. His black features revealed nothing.

  Again Linden wondered what conceivable threat to themselves the Elohim had discerned in the Demondim-spawn, when his sole apparent purpose was to follow her and Covenant. But she could make nothing of it.

  While Starfare’s Gem traveled the open Sea, she grew to feel progressively more lost among things she did not comprehend. She had taken the burden of decision upon herself; but she lacked the experience and conviction—and the power—which had enabled Covenant to bear it. He ached constantly at the back of her mind, an untreated wound. Only her stubborn loyalty to herself kept her from retreating to the loneliness of her cabin, hiding there like a little girl with a dirty dress so that the responsibility would fall to somebody else.

  On the morning of the fifth day after Starfare’s Gem’s escape from the Raw, she awakened in a mood of aggravated discomfiture, as if her sleep had been troubled by nightmares she could not remember. A vague apprehension nagged at the very limit of her senses, too far away to be grasped or understood. Fearing what she might learn, she asked Cail about Covenant. But the Haruchai reported no change. Anxiously she left her cabin, went up to the afterdeck.

  As she scanned the deck, her inchoate sense of trouble increased. The sun shone in the east with an especial brightness, as if it were intent on its own clarity; but still the air seemed as chill as a premonition. Yet nothing appeared amiss. Galewrath commanded the wheeldeck with gruff confidence. And the crewmembers were busy about the vessel, warping it against the vagaries of the wind.

  The First, Honninscrave, and Seadreamer were nowhere to be seen. However, Pitchwife was at work near the aftermast, stirring the contents of a large stone vat. He looked up as Linden drew near him and winced at what he saw. “Chosen,” he said with an effort of good humor which was only partially successful, “were I less certain of our viands, I would believe that you have eaten badly and been made unwell. It is said that Sea and sun conduce to health and appetite—yet you wear the wan aspect of the sickbed. Are you ailed?”

  She shook her head imprecisely. “Something— I can’t figure it out. I feel a disaster coming. But I don’t know—” Groping for a way to distract herself, she peered into the vat. “Is that more of your pitch? How do you make it?”

  At that, he laughed, and his mirth came more easily. “Yes, Chosen. In all good sooth, this is my pitch. The vat is formed of dolomite, that it may not be fused as would the stone of Starfare’s Gem. But as to the making of pitch—ah, that it skills nothing for me to relate. You are neither Giant nor wiver. And the power of pitch arises as does any other, from the essence of the adept who wields it. All power is an articulation of its wielder. There is no other source than life—and the desire of that life to express itself. But there must also be a means of articulation. I can say little but that this pitch is my chosen means. Having said that, I have left you scarce wiser than before.”

  Linden shrugged away his disclaimer. “Then what you’re saying,” she murmured slowly, “is that the power of wild magic comes from Covenant himself? The ring is just his—his means of articulation?”

  He nodded. “I believe that to be sooth. But the means controls intimately the nature of what may be expressed. By my pitch I may accomplish nothing for the knitting of broken limbs, just as no theurgy of the flesh may seal stone as I do.”

  Musing half to herself, she replied, “That fits. At least with what Covenant says about the Staff of Law. Before it was destroyed. It supported the Law by its very nature. Only certain kinds of things could be done with it.”

  The malformed Giant nodded again; but she was already thinking something else. Turning to face him more directly, she demanded, “But what about the Elohim? They don’t need any means. They are power. They can express anything they want, any way they want. Everything they said to us—all that stuff about Seadreamer’s voice and Covenant’s venom, and how Earthpower isn’t the answer to Despite. It was all a lie.” Her rage came back to her in a rush. She was trembling and white-knuckled before she could stop herself.

  Pitchwife considered her closely. “Be not so hasty in your appraisal of these Elohim.” His twisted features seemed to bear Seadreamer’s pain and Covenant’s loss as if they had been inflicted on him personally; yet he rejected their implications, refused to be what he appeared. “They are who they are—a high and curious people—and their might is matched and conflicted and saddened by their limitations.”

  She started to argue; but he stopped her with a gesture that asked her to sit beside him against the base of the aftermast. Lowering himself carefully, he leaned his crippled back to the stone. When she joined him, her shoulder blades felt the sails thrumming through the mast. The vibrations tasted obscurely troubled and foreboding. They sent rumors along her nerves like precursors of something unpredictable. Starfare’s Gem rolled with a discomforting irrhythm.

  “Chosen,” Pitchwife said, “I have not spoken to you concerning my examination by the Elohim.”

  She looked at him in surprise. The tale he had told during the first night out from the Raw had glossed over his personal encounters in the clachan as mere digressions. But now she saw that he had his own reasons for having withheld the story then—and for telling it now.

  “At the parting of our company in Elemesnedene,” he said quietly, as if he did not wish to be overheard, “I was accorded the guidance of one who named himself Starkin. He was an Elohim of neither more nor less wonder than any other, and so I followed him willingly. Among the lovely and manifold mazements of his people, I felt I had been transported to the truest faery heart of all the legends which have arisen from that place. The Giants have held these Elohim in an awe bordering on sanctity, and that awe I learned to taste in my own mouth. Like Grimmand Honninscrave before me, I came to believe that any giving or restitution was feasible in that eldritch realm.”

  The grotesque lines of his face were acute with memory as he spoke; yet his tone was one of calm surety, belying the suggestion that he had suffered any dismay.

  “But then,” he went on, “Starkin turned momentarily from me, and my examination began. For when again he approached, he had altered his shape. He stood before me as another being altogether. He had put aside his robe and his lithe limbs and his features—had transformed even his stature—and now he wore the form and habiliments of a Giant.” Pitchwife sighed softly. “In every aspect he had recreated himself flawlessly.

  “He was myself.

  “Yet not myself as you behold me, but rather myself as I might be in dreams. A Pitchwife of untainted birth and perfect growth. Withal that the image was mine beyond mistaking, he stood straight and tall above me, in all ways immaculately made, and beautiful with the beauty of Giants. He was myself as even Gossamer Glowlimn my love might desire me in her pity. For who would not have loved such a Giant, or desired him?

  “Chosen”—he met Linden with his clear gaze—“there was woe in that sight. In my life I have been taught many things, but until that moment I had not been taught to look upon myself and descry that I was ugly. At my birth, a jest had been wrought upon me—a jest the cruelty of which Starkin displayed before me.”

  Pain for him surged up in her. Only the simple peace of his tone and eyes enabled her to hold back her outrage. How had he borne it?

  He answered squarely, “This was an examination which searched me to the depths of my heart. But at last its truth became plain to me. Though I stood before myself in all the beauty for which I might have lusted, it was not I who stood there, but Starkin. This Giant was manifestly other than myself, for he could not alter his eyes—eyes of gold that shed light, but gave no warmth to what they beheld. And my eyes remained my own. He could not see himself with my sight. Thus I passed
unharmed through the testing he had devised for me.”

  Studying him with an ache of empathy, Linden saw that he was telling the truth. His examination had given him pain, but no hurt. And his unscathed aspect steadied her, enabling her to see past her anger to the point of his story. He was trying to explain his perception that the Elohim could only be who they were and nothing else—that any might was defined and limited by its very nature. No power could transcend the strictures which made its existence possible.

  Her ire faded as she followed Pitchwife’s thinking. No power? she wanted to ask. Not even wild magic? Covenant seemed capable of anything. What conceivable stricture could bind his white fire? Was there in truth some way that Foul could render him helpless in the end?

  The necessity of freedom, she thought. If he’s already sold himself—

  But as she tried to frame her question, her sense of disquiet returned. It intruded on her pulse; blood began to throb suddenly in her temples. Something had happened. Tension cramped her chest as she fumbled for perception.

  Pitchwife was saying wryly, “Your pardon, Chosen. I see that I have not given you ease.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not it.” The words left her mouth before she realized what she was saying. “What happened to Vain?”

  The Demondim-spawn was gone. His place near the railing was empty.

  “Naught I know of,” Pitchwife replied, surprised by her reaction. “A short while after the sun’s rising, he strode forward as though his purpose had awakened in him. To the foremast he fared, and it he greeted with such a bow and smile as I mislike to remember. But then he lapsed to his former somnolence. There he stands yet. Had he moved, those who watch him would surely have informed us.”

  “It is true,” Cail said flatly. “Ceer guards him.”

  Under her breath, Linden muttered, “You’ve got to be kidding,” and climbed to her feet. “This I’ve got to see.” When Pitchwife joined her, she stalked away toward Foodfendhall and the foredeck.

  There she saw Vain as he had been described, facing the curved surface of the mast from an arm’s length away. His posture was the same as always: elbows slightly crooked at his sides; knees flexing just enough to maintain his balance against the choppy gait of the dromond; back straight. Yet to her gaze he wore a telic air. He confronted the mast as if they were old comrades, frozen on the verge of greeting one another.

  To herself, she murmured, “What the hell—?”

  “Forsooth,” responded Pitchwife with a light chuckle. “Had this Demondim-spawn not been gifted to the ur-Lord by a Giant, I would fear he means to ravish the maidenhood of our foremast.” At that, laughter spouted from the nearby crewmembers, then spread like a kinship of humor through the rigging as his jest was repeated to those who had not heard it.

  But Linden was not listening to him. Her ears had caught another sound—a muffled shout from somewhere belowdecks. As she focused her hearing, she identified Honninscrave’s stertorous tones.

  He was calling Seadreamer’s name. Not in anger or pain, but in surprise. And trepidation.

  The next moment, Seadreamer erupted from one of the hatchways and charged forward as if he meant to hurl himself at Vain. Honninscrave followed him; but Linden’s attention was locked on the mute Giant. He looked wild and visionary, like a prophet or a madman; and the scar across his visage stood out stark and pale, underlining his eyes with intensity. Cries he could not utter strained the muscles of his neck.

  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 center 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 gentl
y, 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 surpassed 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.