One Tree (7 page)

“Yet you must aid him.”

The hard voice pierced Linden. She turned sharply, found herself facing the First of the Search. She had been so caught up in what she was saying to Seadreamer, so locked into herself, that she had not felt the First’s approach.

The First glared at her sternly. “I grant that the burden is terrible to you. That is plain.” She bore herself like a woman who had made a fierce decision of her own. “But the Search has been given into his hands. It must not fail.”

With a brusque movement, she drew her broadsword, held it before her as though she meant to enforce Linden’s compliance with keen iron. Linden pressed her back against the rail in apprehension; but the First bent down, placed her glaive on the deck between them. Then she drew herself erect, fixed Linden with the demand of her stare. “Have you the strength to wield my blade?”

Involuntarily Linden looked down at the broadsword. Gleaming densely in the moonlight, it appeared impossibly heavy.

“Have you the strength to lift it from where it lies?”

Linden wrenched her eyes back to the First in dumb protest.

The Swordmain nodded as if Linden had given her the reply she sought. “Nor have I the insight to act against the Giantfriend’s illness. You are Linden Avery the Chosen. I am the First of the Search. We cannot bear each other’s burdens.”

Her gaze shed midnight into Linden’s upturned face. “Yet if you do not shoulder the lot which has befallen you, then I swear by my glaive that I will perform whatever act lies within my strength. He will not accept any approach. Therefore I will risk my people, and Starfare’s Gem itself, to distract him. And while he strikes at them, with this sword I will sever the envenomed arm from his body. I know no other way to rid him of that ill—and us of the peril of his power. If fortune smiles upon us, we will be able to staunch the wound ere his life is lost.”

Sever? Sudden weakness flooded through Linden. If the first succeeded—! In a flash of vision, she saw that great blade hacking like an execution at Covenant’s shoulder. And blood. Dark under the waxing moon, it would gush out almost directly from his heart. If it were not stopped in an instant, nothing could save him. She was a world away from the equipment she would need to give him transfusions, suture the wound, keep his heart beating until his blood pressure was restored. That blow could be as fatal as the knife-thrust which had once impaled his chest.

The back of her head struck the cross-support of the railing as she sank to the deck; and for a moment pain labored in the bones of her skull.
Sever?
He had already lost two fingers to surgeons who knew no other answer to his illness. If he lived—She groaned. Ah, if he lived, how could she ever meet his gaze to tell him that she had done nothing—that she had stood by in her cowardice and allowed his arm to be cut away?

“No.” Her hands covered her face. Her craven flesh yearned to deny what she was saying. He would have reason to hate her if she permitted the First’s attempt. And to hate her forever if she saved his life at the cost of his independent integrity. Was she truly this hungry for power? “I’ll try.”

Then Cail was at her side. He helped her to her feet. As she leaned on his shoulder, he thrust a flask into her hands. The faint smell of diluted
diamondraught
reached her. Fumbling weakly, she pulled the flask to her mouth and drank.

Almost at once, she felt the liquor exerting its analystic potency. Her pulse carried life back into her muscles. The pain in her head withdrew to a dull throbbing at the base of her neck. The moonlight seemed to grow firmer as her vision cleared.

She emptied the flask, striving to suck strength from it—any kind of strength, anything which might help her withstand the virulence of the venom. Then she forced herself into motion toward the afterdeck.

Beyond Foodfendhall, she came into the light of lanterns. They had been placed along the roof of the housing and around the open deck so that the Giants and
Haruchai
could watch Covenant from a relatively safe distance. They shed a yellow illumination which should have comforted the stark night. But their light reached upward to the wreckage of sails and rigging. And within the pool they cast, all the blood and bodies of the rats had been burned away. Scars of wild magic marked the stone like lines of accusation pointing toward Covenant’s rigid anguish.

The sight of him was almost too much for Linden. From head to foot, he looked force-battered, as if he had been beaten with truncheons. His eyes were wide and staring; but she could see no relict of awareness or sanity in them. His lips had been torn by the convulsive gnashing of his teeth. His forehead glistened with extreme sweat. In his illness, the beard which had formerly given him a heuristic aspect, an air of prophecy, now looked like a reification of his leprosy. And his right arm—

Hideously black, horrendously swollen, it twitched and grasped beside him, threatening his friends and himself with every wince. The dull silver of his wedding band constricted his second finger like blind cruelty biting into his defenseless flesh. And at his shoulder, the arm of his T-shirt was stretched to the tearing point. Fever radiated from the swelling as if his bones had become fagots for the venom.

That emanation burned against Linden’s face even though she stood no closer to him than the verge of the lantern-light. He might already have died if he had not been able to vent the pressure of the poison through his ring. That release was all that kept his illness within bounds his flesh could bear.

Unsteadily she gestured for Cail to retreat. Her hands shook like wounded birds. He hesitated; but Brinn spoke, and Cail obeyed. The Giants held themselves back, locking their breath behind their teeth. Linden stood alone in the margin of the light as if it were the littoral of a vast danger.

She stared at Covenant. The scars on the deck demonstrated beyond any argument that she would never get near enough to touch him. But that signified nothing. No laying on of hands could anele his torment. She needed to reach him with her soul. Take hold of him, silence his defenses long enough to allow some
diamondraught
to be poured down his throat. Possess him.

Either that or tear his power from him. If she was strong enough. Her health-sense made such an attempt feasible. But he was potent and delirious; and nothing in her life had prepared her to believe that she could wrestle with him directly for control of his ring. If she failed, he might kill her in the struggle. And if she succeeded —

She decided to aim herself against his mind. That seemed to be the lesser evil.

Trembling she fought her visceral paresis, compelled her tightened legs to take two steps into the light. Three. There she stopped. Sinking to the stone, she sat with her knees hugged protectively against her chest. The becalmed air felt dead in her lungs. A waifish voice in the back of her brain pleaded for mercy or flight.

But she did not permit herself to waver. She had made her decision. Defying her mortality, her fear of evil and possession and failure, she opened her senses to him.

She began at his feet, hoping to insinuate herself into his flesh, sneak past his defenses. But her first penetration almost made her flee. His sickness leaped the gap to her nerves like ghoul-fire, threatening her self-mastery. For a moment, she remained frozen in fear.

Then her old stubbornness came back to her. It had made her who she was. She had dedicated her life to healing. If she could not use medicine and scalpel, she would use whatever other tools were available. Squeezing her eyes shut to block out the distraction of his torment, she let her perceptions flow up Covenant’s legs toward his heart.

His fever grew in her as her awareness advanced. Her pulse labored; paresthesia flushed across her skin; the ice of deadened nerves burned in her toes, sent cramps groping through her arches into her calves. She was being sucked toward the abyss of his venom. Blackness crowded the night, dimming the lanterns around her. Power—she wanted power. Her lungs shared his shuddering. She felt in her own chest the corrosion which gnawed at his heart, making the muscle flaccid, the beat limp. Her temples began to ache.

He was already a wasteland, and his illness and power ravaged her. She could hardly hold back the horror pounding at the back of her thoughts, hardly ignore the self-protective impetus to abandon this mad doom. Yet she went on creeping through him, studying the venom for a chance to spring at his mind.

Suddenly a convulsion knotted him. Her shared reactions knocked her to the deck. Amid the roil of his delirium, she felt him surging toward power. She was so open to him that any blast would sear through her like a firestorm.

Desperation galvanized her resolve. Discarding stealth, she hurled her senses at his head, tried to dive into his brain.

For an instant, she was caught in the throes of wild magic as he thrashed toward an explosion. Images whirled insanely into her: the destruction of the Staff of Law; men and women being bled like cattle to feed the Banefire; Lena and rape; the two-fisted knife-blow with which he had slain a man she did not know; the slashing of his wrists. And power—white fire which crashed through the Clave, turned Santonin and the Stonemight to tinder, went reaving among the Riders to garner a harvest of blood.
Power
. She could not control him. He shredded her efforts as if her entire being and will were made of brittle old leaves. In his madness, he reacted to her presence as if she were a Raver.

She cried out to him. But the outrage of his ring blew her away.

For a time, she lay buffeted by gusts of midnight. They echoed in her—men and women shed like cattle, guilt and delirium, wild magic made black by venom. Her whole body burned with the force of his blast. She wanted to scream, but could not master the spasms which convulsed her lungs.

But gradually the violence receded until it was contained within her head; and the dark began to take shape around her. She was sitting half upright, supported by Call’s arms. Vaguely she saw the First, Honninscrave, and Pitchwife crouched before her. A lantern revealed the tight concern in their faces.

When she fought her gaze into focus on the Giants, Honninscrave breathed in relief, “Stone and Sea!” Pitchwife chortled, “By the Power
that remains, Chosen! You are hardy. A lesser blast broke Sevinhand Anchormaster’s arm in two places.”

He knew it was me, Linden answered, unaware of her silence. He didn’t let it kill me.

“The fault is mine,” said the First grimly. “I compelled you to this risk. Take no blame upon yourself. Now nothing lies within our power to aid him.”

Linden’s mouth groped to form words. “Blame—?”

“He has put himself beyond our reach. For life or death, we are helpless now.”

Put—? Linden grappled with the surrounding night to look toward Covenant. The First nodded at Honninscrave. He moved aside, unblocking Linden’s view.

When she saw Covenant, she almost wailed aloud.

He lay clenched and rigid, as though he would never move again, with his arms locked at his sides and need like a rictus on his lips. But he was barely visible through the sheath of wild magic which encased him. Shimmering argent covered him as completely as a caul.

Within his cocoon, his chest still struggled for breath, heart still beat weakly. The venom went on swelling his right arm, went on gnawing at his life. But she did not need any other eyes to tell her that nothing known on Starfare’s Gem could breach this new defense. His caul was as indefeasible as leprosy.

This was his delirious response to her attempted possession. Because she had tried to take hold of his mind, he had put himself beyond all succor. He would not have been less accessible if he had withdrawn to another world altogether.

Helplessly Linden watched herself go numb with shock. The residue of Covenant’s leprosy seemed to well up in her, deadening her. She had done that to him? Brinn went stubbornly about the task of proving to himself that no strength or tool he could wield was capable of penetrating Covenant’s sheath; but she hardly noticed the
Haruchai
. It was her doing.

Because she had tried to possess him. And because he had spared her the full consequences of his power.

Then Brinn blurred and faded as tears disfocused her vision. She could no longer see Covenant, except as a pool of hot argent in the streaked lambency of the lanterns. Was this why Lord Foul had chosen her? So that she would cause Covenant’s death?

Yes. She had done such things before.

She retreated into the numbness as if she needed it, deserved it. But the hands which grasped her shoulders were gentle and demanding. Softly they insisted on her attention, urged her out of her inner morass. They were kind and refused to be denied. When she blinked her gaze clear, she found herself looking into Pitchwife’s pellucid eyes.

He sat in front of her, holding her by the shoulders. The deformation of his spine brought his misshapen face down almost to her level. His lips smiled crookedly.

“It is enough, Chosen,” he breathed in a tone of compassion. “This grief skills nothing. It is as the First has said. The fault is not yours.”

For a moment, he turned his head away. “And also not yours, my wife,” he said to the shadow of the First. “You could not have foreknown this pass.”

Then his attention returned to Linden. “He lives yet, Chosen. He lives. And while he lives, there must be hope. Fix your mind upon that. While we live, it is the meaning of our lives to hope.”

I— She wanted to speak, wanted to bare her dismay to Pitchwife’s empathy. But the words were too terrible to be uttered.

His hands tightened slightly, pulling her posture more upright. “We do not comprehend this caul which he has woven about him. We lack your sight. You must guide us now.” His gentleness tugged at the edges of her heart. “Is this power something to be feared? Has he not perchance brought it into being to preserve his life?”

His words seemed to cast her gaze toward Covenant. She could barely see him through his shield. But she could see Vain. The Demondim-spawn stood near Covenant, and all suggestion of grinning was gone from his black mien. He bore himself as he always did, his hidden purpose untouched by any other morality. He was not even alive in any normal sense. But he concentrated on Covenant’s wracked form as if together they were being put to the question of a cruel doom.