One Tree (24 page)

But as the white flame mounted toward concussion, the essence of its light changed, softened. Covenant stood on the surface of a lake, and its waters burned in a gyre before him, lifting the
krill
into his hands. The lake upheld him like a benison, changing his savagery to the light of hope; for there was Earthpower yet within the Land, and this one lake if no other still sustained itself against the Sunbane.

Again the fire changed. Now it streamed away in rills of phosphorescence from the tall figure of a man. He was robed all in whitest sendaline. In his hand, he held a gnarled tree-limb as a staff. He bore himself with dignity and strength; but behind its grave devotion, his face had neither eyes nor eye-sockets.

As he addressed Covenant, other figures appeared. A blue-robed man with a crooked smile and serene eyes. A woman similarly clad, whose passionate features conveyed hints of love and hate. A man like Call and Brinn, as poised and capable as judgment. And a Giant, who must have been Saltheart Foamfollower.

Covenant’s Dead.

With them stood Vain, wearing his black perfection like a cloak to conceal his heart.

The figures spoke to Covenant through the mute vision. The blessing and curse of their affection bore him to his knees. Then the eyeless man, the Forestal, approached. Carefully he stretched out his staff to touch Covenant’s forehead.

Instantly a blaze like a melody of flame sang out over the eftmound; and at once all
Elemesnedene
fell into darkness. Night arched within the vision—a night made explicit and familiar by stars. Slowly the mapwork of the stars began to turn.

“See you, Honninscrave?” cried the First hoarsely.

“Yes!” he responded. “This path I can follow to the ends of the Earth.”

For a time, the stars articulated the way to the One Tree. Then, in the place they had defined, the vision dropped toward the sea. Amid the waves, an isle appeared. It was small and barren, standing like a cairn against the battery of the Sea, marking nothing. No sign of any life relieved the desolation of its rocky sides. Yet the intent of the vision was clear: this was the location of the One Tree.

Over the ocean rose a lorn wail. Covenant cried out as if he had caught a glimpse of his doom.

The sound tore through Linden. She struggled to her feet, tried to thrust her scant strength forward. Covenant knelt with the power blazing from his forehead as if he were being crucified by nails of brain-fire.

For a moment, she could not advance against the light: it held her back like a palpable current pouring from him. But then the bells rang out in unison:

—It is accomplished!

Some of them were savage with victory. Others expressed a deep rue.

At the same time, the vision began to fade from its consummation on the sea-bitten isle. The brilliance macerated by degrees, restoring the natural illumination of
Elemesnedene
, allowing Linden to advance. Step after step, she strove her way to Covenant. Vestiges of vision seemed to burn across her skin, crackle like lightning in her hair; but she fought through them. As the power frayed away to its end, leaving the atmosphere as stunned and still as a wasteland, she dropped to the ground in front of the Unbeliever.

He knelt in a slack posture, resting back on his heels with his arms unconsciously braced on his knees. He seemed unaware of anything. His gaze stared through her like a blind man’s. His mouth hung open as if he had been bereft of every word or wail. His breathing shook slightly, painfully. The muscles of his chest ached in Linden’s sight as if they had been torn on the rack of Infelice’s opening.

But when she reached out her hand to him, he croaked like a parched and damaged raven, “Don’t touch me.”

The words were clear. They echoed the old warning of his leprosy for all the
Elohim
to hear. But in his eyes the light of his mind had gone out.

The bells were clear to Linden now; but she no longer cared what they were saying. She was locked to Covenant’s vacant eyes, his slack, staring face. If he could see her at all, the sight had no meaning to him. He did not react when she took hold of his head, thrust her horrified gaze at him.

The Giants were clamoring to know what had happened to him. She ignored them. Desperately marshaling her percipience, she tried to penetrate the flat emptiness of his orbs, reach his mind. But she failed: within his head, her vision vanished into darkness. He was like a snuffed candle, and the only smoke curling up from the extinguished wick was his old clenched stricture:

“Don’t touch me.”

She began to founder in that dark. Something of him must have remained sentient, otherwise he could not have continued to articulate his self-despite. But that relict of his consciousness was beyond her grasp. The darkness seemed to leech away her own light. She was falling into an emptiness as eternal and hungry as the cold void between the stars.

Savagely she tore herself out of him.

Honninscrave and Seadreamer stood with the First at Covenant’s back. Pitchwife knelt beside Linden, his huge hands cupping her shoulders in appeal. “Chosen.” His whisper ached among the trailing wisps of dark. “Linden Avery. Speak to us.”

She was panting in rough heaves. She could not find enough air. The featureless light of
Elemesnedene
suffocated her. The
Elohim
loomed claustrophobically around her, as unscrupulous as ur-viles. “You planned this,” she grated between gasps. “This is what you wanted all along.” She was giddy with extremity. “To destroy him.”

The First drew a sharp breath. Pitchwife’s hands tightened involuntarily. Wincing to his feet as if he needed to meet his surprise upright, he lifted Linden erect. Honninscrave gaped at her. Seadreamer stood with his arms rigid at his sides, restraining himself from vision.

“Enough,” responded Infelice. Her tone was peremptory ice. “I will submit no longer to the affront of such false judgment. The
Elohimfest
has ended.” She turned away.

“Stop!” Without Pitchwife’s support, Linden would have fallen like pleading to the bare ground. All her remaining strength went into her voice. “You’ve got to restore him! Goddamn it, you can’t leave him like this!”

Infelice paused, but did not look back. “We are the
Elohim
. Our choices lie beyond your questioning. Be content.” Gracefully she continued down the hillside.

Seadreamer broke into motion, hurled himself after her. The First and Honninscrave shouted, but could not halt him. Bereft of his wan, brief hope, he had no other outlet for his pain.

But Infelice heard or sensed his approach. Before he reached her, she snapped, “Hold, Giant!”

He rebounded as if he had struck an invisible wall at her back. The force of her command sent him sprawling.

With stately indignation, she faced him. He lay groveling on his chest; but his lips were violent across his teeth, and his eyes screamed at her.

“Assail me not with your mistrust,” she articulated slowly, “lest I teach you that your voiceless Earth-Sight is honey and benison beside the ire of
Elemesnedene
.”

“
No
.” By degrees, life was returning to Linden’s limbs; but still she needed Pitchwife’s support. “If you want to threaten somebody, threaten me. I’m the one who accuses you.”

Infelice looked at her without speaking.

“You planned all this,” Linden went on. “You demeaned him, dismissed him, insulted him—to make him angry enough so that he would let you into him and dare you to hurt him. And then you wiped out his mind. Now”—she gathered every shred of her vehemence—“
restore it
!”

“Sun-Sage,” Infelice said in a tone of glacial scorn, “you mock yourself and are blind to it.” Moving disdainfully, she left the eftmound and passed through the ring of dead trees.

On all sides, the other
Elohim
also turned away, dispersing as if Linden and her companions held no more interest for them.

With an inchoate cry, Linden swung toward Covenant. For one wild instant, she intended to grab his ring, use it to coerce the
Elohim
.

The sight of him stopped her. The First had raised him to his feet. He stared through Linden as though she and everything about her had ceased to exist for him; but his empty refrain sounded like an unintentional appeal.

“Don’t touch me.”

Oh, Covenant! Of course she could not take his ring. She could not do that to him, if for no other reason than because it was what the
Elohim
wanted. Or part of what they wanted. She ached in protest, but her resolve had frayed away into uselessness again. A surge of weeping rose up in her; she barely held it back. What have they done to you?

“Is it sooth?” the First whispered to the ambiguous sky. “Have we gained this knowledge at such a cost to him?”

Linden nodded dumbly. Her hands made fumbling gestures. She had trained them to be a physician’s hands, and now she could hardly contain the yearning to strangle. Covenant had been taken from her as surely as if he had been slain—murdered like Nassic by a blade still hot with cruelty. She felt that if she did not move, act, stand up for herself somehow, she would go mad.

Around her, the Giants remained still as if they had been immobilized by her dismay. Or by the loss of Covenant, of his determination. No one else could restore the purpose of the quest.

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.