The One Tree

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  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 ground, 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 valor. 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 realized 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, and 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 Harbor. 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 in acknowledgment; but still her desire to do something, anything, which might relieve her sense of helplessness was plain.

  Linden gripped herself more tightly. “There’s a lot I need to do for Ceer’s leg. If I don’t get the bone chips out of that joint, it’ll never move again. But that can wait a while. Right now I need hot water and bandages. He’s still bleeding. And this heat makes infection spread fast.” Her vision was precise and certain. She saw mortification already gnawing the edges of Ceer’s wounds. “That can’t wait. If I don’t help him soon, he’ll lose the whole leg.” The Haruchai watched her as if they were fundamentally uncertain of her. But she clung to the promises she had made, forced herself to ignore their doubt. “If we go on pretending we’re the gaddhi’s guests, Grist can’t very well refuse to give us what we need.”

  For a moment, the company was silent. Linden heard nothing except the cool plashing of the fountain. Then Brinn said flatly, “The Elohim speaks truly.”

  At that, the First stiffened. “Aye,” she growled, “the Elohim speaks truly. And Hergrom expended his life for us, though you deem it failure. I am prepared to hazard somewhat in the name of Ceer’s hurt.” Without waiting for a response, she swung toward the Caitiffin, calling as she moved, “Ho, Rire Grist! Our companion is sorely injured. We must have medicaments.”

  “Instantly,” he replied. He could not conceal the relief in his tone. He spoke rapidly to his aide, sent the man running toward the Sandhold. Then he said to the First, “All you require will await you in your chambers.”

  Honninscrave and Seadreamer followed the First; and Linden went with them, giving Brinn and Cail no choice but to do the same. Vain and Findail brought up the rear.

  The two Guards stepped aside. Either they were now able to identify the gaddhi’s guests, or they had been given new orders. Together the company passed through the Sandwall, hastened as best they could over the sand toward the entrance to the Sandhold. Linden clinched herself against the moment when she might break and forced herself to match the First’s pace.

  Within the high forecourt of the First Circinate, the old gloom lurked, momentarily concealing everything beyond the direct light from the gates. Before her eyes adjusted, Linden received a confusing impression of Guards and people—and of another presence which surprised her.

  For a fleeting moment, she was aware of the people. They were servants, but not the comely and graceful servitors who had waited on the Chatelaine the day before. Rather they were the menials of the Sandhold, men and women who were too aged or unbecoming to please the eye of the gaddhi—or of the Kemper. And the wealth of Bhrathairealm clearly did not extend to them. Dressed in the tattered habiliments of their impoverishment, they were on their hands and knees, cleaning up after the horses which had been exercised here earlier. Linden wondered how many of them had once been courtiers or Favored.

  But then her senses cleared, and she forgot the servants as her heart bounded toward Pitchwife.

  Several hustin stood around him, holding him where he was but not threatening him. Apparently they had been instructed to make him wait here for his friends.

  At the sight of the First and her companions, relief stretched his misshapen features. But Linden read the nature of his tidings in the hunch
ing of his shoulders and the unwonted darkness of his gaze.

  The sudden softening of the First’s features revealed how keenly she had been yearning for her husband. Pitchwife started toward her as if he could not wait to embrace her.

  His mien brought back the company’s peril to Linden. Deliberately she keyed her voice to a pitch and timbre which compelled the attention of the Giants. “Don’t say anything. Kasreyn hears everything the Guards hear.”

  Indirectly she watched the Caitiffin. His face flushed as if he were suppressing apoplexy. In the privacy of her mind, she permitted herself a severe grin. She wanted the Kemper to know that she knew at least this much about him.

  With one hand, Cail brushed her arm like a reminder of the marks he had left in her flesh. But she ignored him. She knew the risk she had taken.

  Pitchwife’s face clenched as he bit back his native volubility. The First tensed in recognition of Linden’s ploy, shot a glance at Honninscrave. The Master dropped a shutter of blandness over his visage as he resumed his role as spokesman for the company; but the knotting of his jaw made his beard jut like belligerence. Smoothly he introduced Pitchwife and Rire Grist to each other. Then he urged the Caitiffin to make haste for the sake of Ceer’s leg.

  Rire Grist appeared glad to comply, unintentionally eager for haste, as if he felt a personal need to finish this duty so that he would be free to consult with his master, ask for new instructions. Without delay, he led the company up out of the First Circinate, through the back ways of the Second to the guesting rooms. Then he stood as if his kneecaps were quivering while he waited for the company to let him go.

  In the sitting-room across from the bedchambers, the questers found Rire Grist’s aide and an assortment of medical supplies: a large brass urn of boiling water; various dippers and cutting-implements; bolts of clean linen for bandages; an array of balms and unguents in small stoneware pots. While Linden inspected what he had brought, the aide asked her if she required the services of one of the Sandhold’s chief surgeons. She refused—would have refused even if she had wanted such help. She and her companions needed a chance to talk freely, unheard by any spying ears.