One Tree

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Witness!” he exclaimed as if his work made him gay. Climbing the ladder, he began to form his pitch like clay into the broken wall at the edge of the roof. Deftly he shaped the pitch until it filled the breach, matching the lines of the wall exactly. Then he descended, returned to his slab of rock. His mighty fingers snapped a chip the size of his palm off the slab. His eyes gleamed. Chortling cheerfully, he went back to the roof.

  With a flourish, as if to entertain a large audience, he embedded his chip in the pitch. At once, he snatched back his hand.

  To Linden’s amazement, the chip seemed to crystallize the pitch. Almost instantly, the mass was transformed to stone. In the space between two heartbeats, the pitch fused itself into the breach. The wall was restored to wholeness as if it had never been harmed. She could find no mark or flaw to distinguish the new stone from the old.

  The expression on her face drew a spout of glee from Pitchwife. “Witness, and be instructed,” he laughed happily. “This bent and misbegotten form is an ill guide to the spirit within.” With precarious bravado, he thrust out his arms. “I am Pitchwife the Valorous!” he shouted. “Gaze upon me and suffer awe!”

  His mirth was answered by the Giants nearby. They shared his delight, relished his comic posturing. But then the First’s voice carried through the jests and ripostes. “Surely you are valorous,” she said; and for an instant Linden misread her tone. She appeared to be reprimanding Pitchwife’s levity. But a quick glance corrected this impression. The First’s eyes sparkled with an admixture of fond pleasure and dark memory. “And if you descend not from that perch,” she went on, “you will become Pitchwife the Fallen.”

  Another shout of laughter rose from the crew. Feigning imbalance, Pitchwife tottered down the ladder; but his mien shone as if he could hardly refrain from dancing.

  Shortly the Giants returned to their tasks; the First moved away; and Pitchwife contented himself with continuing his work more soberly. He repaired the roof in small sections so that his pitch would not sag before he could set it; and when he finished, the roof was as whole as the wall. Then he turned his attention to the fire-scars along the deck. These he mended by filling them with pitch, smoothing them to match the deck, then setting each with a chip of stone. Though he worked swiftly, he seemed as precise as a surgeon.

  Sitting against the wall of the housing, Linden watched him. At first, his accomplishments fascinated her; but gradually her mood turned. The Giant was like Covenant—gifted with power; strangely capable of healing. And Covenant was the question to which she had found no answer.

  In an almost perverse way, that question appeared to be the same one which so bedeviled her in another form. Why was she here? Why had Gibbon said to her, You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth, and then afflicted her with such torment to convince her that he spoke the truth?

  She felt that she had spent her life with that question and still could not reply to it.

  “Ah, Chosen.” Pitchwife had finished his work. He stood facing her with arms akimbo and echoes of her uncertainty in his eyes. “Since first I beheld you in the dire mirk of the Sarangrave, I have witnessed no lightening of your spirit. From dark to dark it runs, and no dawn comes. Are you not content with the redemption of Covenant Giantfriend and Mistweave—a saving which none other could have performed?” He shook his head, frowning to himself. Then, abruptly, he moved forward, seated himself against the wall near her. “My people have an apothegm—as who does not in this wise and contemplative world?” He regarded her seriously, though the corners of his mouth quirked. “It is said among us, ‘A sealed door admits no light.’ Will you not speak to me? No hand may open that door but your own.”

  She sighed. His offer touched her; but she was so full of things she did not know how to say that she could hardly choose among them. After a moment, she said, “Tell me there’s a reason.”

  “A reason?” he asked quietly.

  “Sometimes—” She groped for a way to articulate her need. “He’s why I’m here. Either I got dragged along behind him by accident. Or I’m supposed to do something to him. For him,” she added, remembering the old man on Haven Farm. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me. But sometimes when I’m sitting down there watching him, the chance he might die terrifies me. He’s got so many things I need. Without him, I don’t have any reasons here. I never knew I would feel”—she passed a hand over her face, then dropped it, deliberately letting Pitchwife see as much of her as he could—“feel so maimed without him.

  “But it’s more than that.” Her throat closed at what she was thinking. I just don’t want him to die! “I don’t know how to help him. Not really. He’s right about Lord Foul—and the danger to the Land. Somebody has got to do what he’s doing. So the whole world won’t turn into a playground for Ravers. I understand that. But what can I do about it? I don’t know this world the way he does. I’ve never even seen the things that made him fall in love with the Land in the first place. I’ve never seen the Land healthy.

  “I have tried,” she articulated against the old ache of futility, “to help. God preserve me, I’ve even tried to accept the things I can see when nobody else sees them and for all I know I’m just going crazy. But I don’t know how to share his commitment. I don’t have the power to do anything.” Power, yes. All her life, she had wanted power. But her desire for it had been born in darkness—and wedded there more intimately than any marriage of heart and will. “Except try to keep him alive and hope he doesn’t get tired of dragging me around after him. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything with my life except deny. I didn’t become a doctor because I wanted people to live. I did it because I hate death.”

  She might have gone on, then. There in the sunlight, with the stone warm under her, the breeze in her hair, Pitchwife’s gentleness at her side, she might have risked her secrets. But when she paused, the Giant spoke into the silence.

  “Chosen, I hear you. There is doubt in you, and fear, and also concern. But these things pass as well by another name, which you do not speak.”

  He shifted his posture, straightened himself as much as the contortion of his back allowed. “I am a Giant. I desire to tell you a story.”

  She did not answer. She was thinking that no one had ever spoken to her with the kind of empathy she heard from Pitchwife.

  After a moment, he commenced by saying, “Perchance it has come to your ears that I am husband to the First of the Search, whom I name Gossamer Glowlimn.” Mutely she nodded. “That is a tale worthy of telling.

  “Chosen,” he began, “you must first understand that the Giants are a scant-seeded people. It is rare among us for any family to have as many as three children. Therefore our children are precious to us—aye, a very treasure to all the Giants, even such a one as myself, born sickly and malformed like an augury of Earth-Sight to come. But we are also a long-lived people. Our children are children yet when they have attained such age as yours. Therefore our families may hope for lives together in spans more easily measured by decades than years. Thus the bond between parent and child, generation after generation, is both close and enduring—as vital among us as any marriage.

  “This you must grasp in order to comprehend that my Glowlimn has been twice bereaved.”

  He placed his words carefully into the sunshine as if they were delicate and valuable. “The first loss was a sore one. The life of Spray Frothsurge her mother failed in childbed—which in itself is a thing of sad wonder, for though our people are scant-seeded we are hardy, and such a loss is rare. Therefore from the first my Glowlimn had not the love of her mother, which all cherish. Thus she clung with the greater strength—a strength which some have named urgency—to Brow Gnarlfist her father.

  “Now Brow Gnarlfist was the Master of a roaming Giantship proudly named Wavedancer, and his salt yearning took him often from his child, who grew to be so lissome and sweet that any heart which beheld her ached. And also she was the memory of Frothsurge his
wife. Therefore he bore young Glowlimn with him on all his sailings, and she grew into her girlhood with the deck lifting beneath her feet and the salt in her hair like gems.

  “At that time”—Pitchwife cast Linden a brief glance, then returned his gaze to the depths of the sky and his story—“I served my craft upon Wavedancer. Thus Glowlimn became known to me until her face was the light in my eyes and her smile was the laughter in my throat. Yet of me she kenned little. Was she not a child? What meaning should a cripple of no great age have to her? She lived in the joy of her father, and the love of the ship, and knew me only as one Giant among many others more clearly akin to Gnarlfist her father. With that I was content. It was my lot. A woman—and moreso a girl—looks upon a cripple with pity and kindness, perhaps, and with friendship, but not desire.

  “Yet the time came—as mayhap it must come to all ships in the end—when Wavedancer ran by happenstance into the Soulbiter.

  “I say happenstance, Linden Avery, for so I believe it was. The Soulbiter is a perilous and imprecise Sea, and no chart has ever told its tale surely. But Brow Gnarlfist took a harsher view. He faulted his navigation, and as the hazard into which we had blundered grew, so grew his self-wrath.

  “For it was the season of gales in the Soulbiter, and the water was woven with crosswinds, buffeting Wavedancer in all ways at once. No sail could serve, and so the dromond was driven prow after keel southward, toward the place of reefs and peril known as Soulbiter’s Teeth.

  “Toward the Teeth we were compelled without help or hope. As we neared that region, Gnarlfist in desperation forced up canvas. But only three sails could be set—and only Dawngreeter held. The others fled in scraps from the spars. Yet Dawngreeter saved us, though Gnarlfist would not have credited it, for he was enmeshed in his doom and saw no outcome to all his choices but disaster.

  “Torn from wind to wind among the gales, we stumbled into Soulbiter’s Teeth.”

  Pitchwife’s narration carried Linden with him: she seemed to feel a storm rising behind the sunlight, gathering just out of sight like an unforeseen dismay.

  “We were fortunate in our way. Fortunate that Dawngreeter held. And fortunate that we were not driven into the heart of the Teeth. In that place, with reefs ragged and fatal on all sides, Wavedancer would surely have been battered to rubble. But we struck upon the outermost reef—struck, and stuck, and heeled over to our doom with all the Soulbiter’s wrath piling against us.

  “At that moment, Dawngreeter caught a counterposing gale. Its force lifted us from the reef, hurling us away along a backlash of the current before the sail tore. In that way were we borne from the imminent peril of the Teeth.

  “Yet the harm was done. We knew from the listing of the dromond that the reef had breached our hull. A craft of stone is not apt for buoyancy with such a wound. Pumps we had, but they made no headway.

  “Gnarlfist cried his commands to me, but I scarce heard them, and so caught no hint of his intent. What need had I of commands at such a time? Wavedancer’s stone had been breached, and the restoration of stone was my craft. Pausing only to gather pitch and setrock, I went below.”

  His tone was focused and vivid now, implying rather than detailing the urgency of his story. “To the breach I went, but could not approach it. Though the wound was no larger than my chest, the force of the water surpassed me, thrust as it was by the dromond’s weight and the Soulbiter’s fury. I could not stand before the hole. Still less could I set my pitch. Already the sea within Wavedancer had risen to my waist. I did not relish such a death belowdecks, on the verge of Soulbiter’s Teeth, with nothing gained for my life at all.

  “But as I strove beyond reason or hope to confront the breach, I learned the import of Gnarlfist’s commands. To my uttermost astonishment, the gush of water was halted. And in its place, I beheld the chest of Brow Gnarlfist covering the hole. Driven by the extremity of his self-wrath or his courage, he had leaped into the water, fought his way to the breach. With his own flesh, he granted me opportunity for my work.

  “That opportunity I took. With terrible haste, I wrought pitch and setrock into place, thinking in desperation and folly to heal the wound ere Gnarlfist’s breath gave way. Were I only swift enough, he might regain air in time.”

  The knotting of his voice drew Linden’s gaze toward him. Deep within himself, he relived his story. His fists were clenched. “Fool!” he spat at himself.

  But a moment later he took a long breath, leaned back against the wall of the housing. “Yet though I was a fool, I did what required to be done, for the sake of the dromond and all my companions. With pitch and setrock, I sealed the breach. And in so doing I sealed Gnarlfist to the side of Wavedancer. My pitch took his chest in a grip of stone and held him.”

  Pitchwife sighed. “Giants dove for him. But they could not wrest him from the granite. He died in their hands. And when at last Wavedancer won free to clear weather, allowing our divers to work at less hazard, the fish of the deep had taken all of him but the bound bones.”

  With an effort, he turned to Linden, let her see the distress lingering in his gaze. “I will not conceal from you that I felt great blame at the death of Brow Gnarlfist. You surpass me, for you saved Mistweave and yet did not lose the Giantfriend. For a time which endured beyond the end of that voyage, I could not bear to meet the loss in Glowlimn’s countenance.” But gradually his expression lightened. “And yet a strange fruit grew from the seed of her father’s end, and of my hand in that loss. After her bereavement, I gained a place in her eyes—for had not her father and I saved a great many Giants whom she loved? She saw me, not as I beheld myself—not as a cripple to be blamed—but rather as the man who had given her father’s death meaning. And in her eyes I learned to put aside my blame.

  “In losing her father, she had also lost his salt yearning. Therefore she turned from the Sea. But there was yearning in her still, born of the heart-deep reaving she had suffered. When the spirit is not altogether slain, great loss teaches men and women to desire greatly, both for themselves and for others. And her spirit was not slain, though surely it was darkened and tempered, so that she stands among our people as iron stands among stone.” He was watching Linden intently now, as if he were unsure of her ability to hear what he was saying. “Her yearning she turned to the work of the Swordmainnir.” His tone was serious, but did not disguise the smile in his eyes. “And to me.”

  Linden found that she could not meet his complex attention. Perhaps in truth she did not hear him, did not grasp the reasons why he had told her this story. But what she did hear struck her deeply. Gnarlfist’s suicide contrasted painfully with her own experience. And it shed a hard light on the differences between her and the First—two daughters who had inherited death in such divergent ways.

  In addition, Pitchwife’s willingness to look honestly and openly at his past put the subterfuge of Linden’s own history to shame. Like him, she had memories of desperation and folly. But he relived his and came out of them whole, with more grace than she could conceive. Hers still had so much power—

  He was waiting for her to speak. But she could not. It was too much. All the things she needed drew her to her feet, sent her moving almost involuntarily toward Covenant’s cabin.

  She had no clear idea of what she meant to do. But Covenant had saved Joan from Lord Foul. He had saved Linden herself from Marid. From Sivit na-Mhoram-wist. From Gibbon-Raver. From Sunbane-fever and the lurker of the Sarangrave. And yet he seemed helpless to save himself. She needed some explanation from him. An account which might make sense of her distress.

  And perhaps a chance to account for herself. Her failures had nearly killed him. She needed him to understand her.

  Woodenly she descended to the first underdeck, moved toward Covenant’s cabin. But before she reached it, the door opened, and Brinn came out. He nodded to her flatly. The side of his neck showed the healing vestiges of the burn he had received from Covenant. When he said, “The ur-Lord desires speech with you,” he sp
oke as if his native rectitude and her twisted uncertainty were entirely alien to each other.

  So that he would not see her falter, she went straight into the cabin. But there she stopped, abashed by the bared nerves of her need. Covenant lay high in his hammock; his weakness was written in the pallor of his forehead, in his limp recumbency. But she could see at a glance that the tone of his skin had improved. His pulse and respiration were stable. Sunlight from the open port reflected lucidly out of his orbs. He was recuperating well. In a day or two, he would be ready to get out of bed.

  The gray in his tousled hair seemed more pronounced, made him appear older. But the wild growth of his beard could not conceal the chiseled lines of his mouth or the tension in his gaunt cheeks.

  For a moment, they stared at each other. Then the flush of her dismay impelled her to look away. She wanted to move to the hammock—take his pulse, examine his arm and shin, estimate his temperature—touch him as a physician if she could not reach out to him in any other way. Yet her abashment held her still.

  Abruptly he said, “I’ve been talking to Brinn.” His voice was husky with frailty; but it conveyed a complex range of anger, desire, and doubt. “The Haruchai aren’t very good at telling stories. But I got everything I could out of him.”

  At once, she felt herself grow rigid as if to withstand an attack. “Did he tell you that I almost let you die?”

  She read his reply in the pinched lines around his eyes. She wanted to stop there, but the pressure rising in her was too strong. What had Brinn taught him to think of her? She did not know how to save herself from what was coming. Severely she went on, “Did he tell you that I might have been able to help you when you were first bitten? Before the venom really took over? But I didn’t?”

  He tried to interrupt; she overrode him. “Did he tell you that the only reason I changed my mind was because the First was going to cut off your arm? Did he tell you”—her voice gathered harshness—“that I tried to possess you? And that was what forced you to defend yourself so we couldn’t reach you? And that was why they had to call the Nicor!” Unexpected rage rasped in her throat. “If I hadn’t done that, Mistweave wouldn’t have been hurt at all. Did he tell you that?”