One Tree (44 page)

Behind the company, the Guards turned, reformed their ranks. Moving stiffly over the stone slabs, they followed Vain and Findail toward the Auspice.

When the Giants entered the brighter illumination around the throne, Brinn suddenly appeared out of the shadows. He did not pause to explain how he had come to be there. Flatly he said, “Hergrom has discovered the ur-Lord. Come.” Turning, he sped back into the darkness behind the
gaddhi
’s seat.

Linden glanced at the
hustin
. They were moving grimly, resolutely, but made no effort to catch up with the interlopers. Perhaps they had now been commanded to block any retreat.

She could not worry about retreat. Covenant was in the Kemper’s hands. She ran after the First and Ceer into the shadow of the Auspice.

Here, too, the wall was deeply carved with tormented shapes like a writhe of ghouls. Even in clear light, the doorway would have been difficult to find, for it was cunningly hidden among the bas-reliefs. But Brinn had learned the way. He went directly to the door.

It swung inward under the pressure of his hand, admitting the company to a narrow stair which gyred upward through the stone. Brinn led, with Honninscrave, Seadreamer, and then Ceer at his back. Linden followed the First. Urgency pulled at her heart, denying the shortness of her breath, the scant strength of her legs. She wanted to cry out Covenant’s name.

The stair seemed impossibly long; but at last it reached a door that opened into a large round chamber. The place was furnished and appointed like a seduction room. Braziers shed light over its intense blue rugs, its lush cushions and couches: the tapestries bedecking the walls depicted a variety of lurid scenes. Almost instantly, the incense in the air began to fill Linden’s lungs with giddiness.

Ahead of her, the Giants and
Haruchai
came to a halt. A
husta
stood there with its spear leveled at the questers, guarding the ironwork stair which rose from the center of the chamber.

This
husta
had no doubt of its duty. One cheek was discolored with bruises, and Linden saw other signs that the Guard had been in a fight. If Hergrom had indeed found Covenant, he must have passed through this chamber to do so. But the
husta
was impervious to its pains. It confronted the company fearlessly.

Brinn bounded forward. He feinted at the Guard, then dodged the spear and leaped for the railing of the stair.

The
husta
tracked him with the point of its spear to strike him in the back. But Seadreamer was already moving. With momentum, weight, and oaken strength, he delivered a blow which stretched the Guard out among the cushions like a sated lover.

As a precaution, Honninscrave jumped after the
husta
, caught hold of its spear and snapped the shaft.

The rest of the company rushed after Brinn.

The stairs took them even higher into the seclusion of Kemper’s Pitch.

Gripping the rail, Linden hauled herself from tread to tread, forced her leaden legs to carry her. The incense and the spiraling affected her like nightmare. She did not know how much farther she could ascend. When she reached the next level, she might be too weak to do anything except struggle for breath.

But her will held, carried her panting and dizzy into the lucubrium of the
gaddhi
’s Kemper.

Her eyes searched the place frenetically. This was clearly Kasreyn’s laboratory, where he wrought his arts. But she could not bring anything she saw into focus. Long tables covered with equipment, crowded shelves, strange contrivances seemed to reel around her.

Then her vision cleared. Beyond the spot where the Giants and Brinn had stopped lay a Guard. It was dead, sprawled in a congealing pool of its own rank blood. Hergrom stood over it like a defiance. Deliberately he nodded toward one side of the lucubrium.

Kasreyn was there.

In his own demesne, surrounded by his possessions and powers, he appeared unnaturally tall. His lean arms were folded like wrath over his chest; but he remained as still as Hergrom, as if he and the
Haruchai
were poised in an impasse. His golden ocular dangled from its ribbon around his neck. His son slept like a tumor on his back.

He was standing in front of a chair which bristled with bindings and apparatus.

Within the bindings sat Covenant.

He was looking at his companions; but his eyes were empty, as if he had no soul.

With her panting clenched between her teeth, Linden slipped past the Giants, hastened forward. For an instant, she glared at Kasreyn, let him see the rage naked in her face. Then she turned her back on him and approached Covenant.

Her hands shook as she tried to undo the bonds. They were too tight for her. When Brinn joined her, she left that task to him and instead concentrated on examining Covenant.

She found no damage. His flesh was unmarked. Behind the slackness of his mouth and the confusion of his beard, nothing had changed. She probed into his body, inspected his bones and organs with her percipience; but internally also he had suffered no harm.

His ring still hung like a fetter on the last finger of his half-hand.

Relief stunned her. For a moment, she became lightheaded with incomprehension, had to steady herself on Brinn’s shoulder as he released the ur-Lord. Had Hergrom stopped Kasreyn in time? Or had the Kemper simply failed? Had the silence of the
Elohim
surpassed even his arts?

Had it in fact defended Covenant from hurt?

“As you see,” Kasreyn said, “he is uninjured.” A slight tremble of age and ire afflicted his voice. “Despite your thought of me, I have sought only his succor. Had this
Haruchai
not foiled me with his presence and needless bloodshed, your Thomas Covenant would have been restored to you whole and well. But no trustworthiness can withstand your suspicion. Your doubt fulfills itself, for it prevents me from accomplishing that which would teach you the honesty of my intent.”

Linden spun on him. Her relief recoiled into fury. “You bastard. If you’re so goddamn trustworthy, why did you do all this?”

“Chosen.” Indignation shone through the rheum of his eyes. “Do any means exist by which I could have persuaded you to concede Thomas Covenant to me alone?”

With all the strength of his personality, he projected an image of offended virtue. But Linden was not daunted. The discrepancy between his stance and his hunger was palpable to her. She was angry enough to tell him what she saw, expose the range of her sight. But she had no time. Heavy feet rang on the iron stairs. Behind the reek of death in the air, she felt
hustin
surging upward. As Brinn drew Covenant from the stair, she turned to warn her companions. They did not need the warning. The Giants and
Haruchai
had already poised themselves in defensive positions around the room.

But the first individual who appeared from the stairwell was not one of the
hustin
. It was Rant Absolain.

The Lady Alif was at his back. She had taken the time to cover herself with a translucent robe.

Behind them came the Guards.

When she saw the fallen
husta
, the Lady Alif’s face betrayed an instant of consternation. She had not expected this. Reading her,
Linden guessed that the Favored had roused the
gaddhi
in an effort to further frustrate Kasreyn’s plans. But the dead Guard changed everything. Before the Lady mastered her expression, it gave away her realization that she had made a mistake.

With a sting of apprehension, Linden saw what the mistake was.

The
gaddhi
did not glance at Kasreyn. He did not notice his guests. His attention was locked to the dead Guard. He moved forward a step, two steps, stumbled to his knees in the dark blood. It splattered thickly, staining his linen. His hands fluttered at the
husta
’s face. Then he tried to turn the Guard over onto its back; but it was too heavy for him. His hands came away covered with blood. He stared at them, gazed blindly up at the crowd around him. His mouth trembled. “My Guard.” He sounded like a bereaved child. “Who has slain my Guard?”

For a moment, the lucubrium was intense with silence. Then Hergrom stepped forward. Linden felt peril thronging in the air. She tried to call him back. But she was too late. Hergrom acknowledged his responsibility to spare his companions from the
gaddhi
’s wrath.

Hustin
continued to arrive. The Giants and
Haruchai
held themselves ready; but they were weaponless and outnumbered.

Slowly Rant Absolain’s expression focused on Hergrom. He arose from his knees, dripping gouts of blood. For a moment, he stared at Hergrom as if he were appalled by the depth of the
Haruchai
’s crime. Then he said, “Kemper.” His voice was a snarl of passion in the back of his throat. Grief and outrage gave him the stature he had lacked earlier. “Punish him.”

Kasreyn moved among the Guards and questers, went to stand near Rant Absolain. “O
gaddhi
, blame him not.” The Kemper’s self-command made him sound telic rather than contrite. “The fault is mine. I have made many misjudgments.”

At that, the
gaddhi
broke like an over-stretched rope.

“I want him
punished
!” With both fists, he hammered at Kasreyn’s chest, pounding smears of blood into the yellow robe. The Kemper recoiled a step; and Rant Absolain turned to hurl his passion at Hergrom. “That Guard is mine!
Mine
! Then he faced Kasreyn again. “In all
Bhrathairealm
, I possess nothing! I am the
gaddhi
, and the
gaddhi
is only a servant!” Rage and self-pity writhed in him. “The Sandhold is not mine! The Riches are not mine! The Chatelaine attends me only at your whim!” He stooped to the dead
husta
and scooped up handfuls of the congealing fluid, flung them at Kasreyn, at Hergrom. A gobbet trickled and fell from Kasreyn’s chin, but he ignored it. “Even my Favored come to me from you! After you have used them!” Rant Absolain’s fists jerked blows through the air. “But the Guard is
mine
! They alone obey me without looking first to learn your will!” With a shout, he concluded, “
I want him punished
!”

Rigid as madness, he faced the Kemper. After a moment, Kasreyn said, “O
gaddhi
, your will is my will.” His tone was suffused with regret. As he stepped slowly, ruefully, toward Hergrom, the tension concealed within his robe conveyed a threat. “Hergrom—” Linden began. Then her throat locked on the warning. She did not know what the threat was.

Her companions braced themselves to leap to Hergrom’s aid. But they, too, could not define the threat.

The Kemper stopped before Hergrom, studied him briefly. Then Kasreyn lifted his ocular to his left eye. Linden tried to relax. The
Haruchai
had already proven themselves impervious to the Kemper’s
geas
. Hergrom’s flat orbs showed no fear.

Gazing through his eyepiece, Kasreyn reached out with careful unmenace and touched his index finger to the center of Hergrom’s forehead.

Hergrom’s only reaction was a slight widening of his eyes.

The Kemper dropped both hands, sagged as if in weariness or sorrow. Without a word, he turned away. The Guards parted for him as he went to the chair where Covenant had been bound. There he seated himself, though he could not lean back because of the child he carried. With his fingers, he hid his face as if he were mourning.

But to Linden the emotion he concealed felt like glee.

She was unsure of her perception. The Kemper was adept at disguising the truth about himself. But Rant Absolain’s reaction was unmistakable. He was grinning in fierce triumph.

His mouth moved as if he wanted to say something that would crush the company, demonstrate his own superiority; but no words came to him. Yet his passion for the Guards sustained him. He might indeed have been a monarch as he moved away. Commanding the
hustin
to follow him, he took the Lady Alif by the hand and left the lucubrium.

As she started downward, the Lady cast one swift look like a pang of regret toward Linden. Then she was gone, and the Guards were thumping down the iron stairs behind her. Two of them bore their dead fellow away.

None of the questers shifted while the
hustin
filed from the chamber. Vain’s bland ambiguous smile was a reverse image of Findail’s alert pain. The First stood with her arms folded over her chest, glaring like a hawk. Honninscrave and Seadreamer remained poised nearby. Brinn had placed Covenant at Linden’s side, where the four
Haruchai
formed a cordon around the people they had sworn to protect.

Linden held herself rigid, pretending severity. But her sense of peril did not abate.

The Guards were leaving. Hergrom had suffered no discernible harm. In a moment, Kasreyn would be alone with the questers. He would be in their hands. Surely he could not defend himself against so many of them. Then why did she feel that the survival of the company had become so precarious?

Brinn gazed at her intently. His hard eyes strove to convey a message without words. Intuitively she understood him.

The last
husta
was on the stairs. The time had almost come. Her knees were trembling. She flexed them slightly, sought to balance herself on the balls of her feet.

The Kemper had not moved. From within the covert of his hands, he said in a tone of rue, or cleverly mimicked rue, “You may return to your rooms. Doubtless the
gaddhi
will later summon you. I must caution you to obey him. Yet I would you could credit that I regret all which has transpired here.”

The moment had come. Linden framed the words in her mind. Time and again, she had dreamed of slaying Gibbon-Raver. She had even berated Covenant for his restraint in Revelstone. She had said
, Some infections have to be cut out
. She had believed that. What was power for, if not to extirpate evil? Why else had she become who she was?

But now the decision was upon her—and she could not speak. Her heart leaped with fury at everything Kasreyn had done, and still she could not speak. She was a doctor, not a killer. She could not give Brinn the permission he wanted.