One Tree (71 page)

Moving as surely as if he had spent all his life here, Brinn approached the ledge. In spite of its crude edges and dangerous slope, the ledge was wide enough for a Giant. The First followed Brinn with Pitchwife immediately behind her.

Bracing his numb hands against Pitchwife’s crippled back, Covenant went next. A rearward glance which threatened to unseat his balance told him that Cail was right behind him, poised between Linden and him to protect them both. Vain and Findail came after Linden. Then the pull of the gulf became too strong, plucked too perilously at his mind. Clinging to Pitchwife’s sark with his futile fingers, he strove for the still point of clarity at the heart of his vertigo.

But when he had gone partway around the first curve, Linden called his name softly, directing his attention backward. Over his shoulder, he saw that Honninscrave and Seadreamer had not begun to descend. They faced each other on the rim in silence like an argument of life and death. Seadreamer was shaking his head now, refusing what he saw in Honninscrave’s visage. After a moment, the Master slumped. Stepping aside, he let Seadreamer precede him down the ledge.

In that formation, the company slowly spiraled into darkness.

Two turns within the wall left the sunlight behind. Its reach lengthened as the sun rose toward midday; but the quest’s descent was swifter. Covenant’s eyes refused to adjust; the shadow baffled his vision. He wanted to look upward, see something clearly—and was sure he would fall if he did. The dark accumulated around him and was sucked into the depths, trying to sweep him along. Those depths were giddy and certain, as requisite as vertigo or despair. They gnawed at his heart like the acid of his sins. Somewhere down there was the eye of the spin, the still point of strength between contradictions on which he had once stood to defeat Lord Foul, but he would never reach it. This ledge was the path of all the Despiser’s manipulations.
Seadreamer is afraid. I think he knows what Lord Foul is doing
. A misstep took him as close as panic to the lip of the fall. He flung himself against
Pitchwife’s back, hung there with his heart knocking. Even to his blunt senses, the air reeked of power.

As if the venom were not enough, here was another force driving him toward destruction. The atmosphere chilled his skin, made his sweat scald down his cheeks and ribs like trails of wild magic.

Cail reached out to steady him from behind. Pitchwife murmured reassurances over his shoulder. After a while, Covenant was able to move again. They went on downward.

He needed the thickness of his robe to keep him from shivering. He seemed to be entering a demesne which had never been touched by the sun—a place of such dark and somnolent force that even the direct radiance of the sun would not be able to soften its ancient cold. Perhaps no fire would ever be strong enough to etiolate the midnight gaping beyond his feet. Perhaps none of the questers except Brinn had any right to be here. At every step, he became smaller. The dark isolated him. Beyond Pitchwife and Cail, he only recognized his friends by the sounds of their feet. The faint slap and thrust of their soles rose murmurously in the well, like the soughing of bat wings.

He had no way to measure time in that night, could not count the number of rounds he had made. For a mad instant, he looked up at the small oriel of the sky. Then he had to let Cail uphold him while his balance reeled.

The air of the gulf became colder, more crowded with faint susurrations, less endurable. For some reason, he believed that the pit became wider as it sank into the bowels of the Isle. In spite of his numbness, every emanation of the walls was as palpable as a fist—and as secret as an unmarked grave. He was suffocating on power which had no source and no form. He heard Linden behind him. Her respiration shuddered like imminent hysteria. The air made him feel veined with insane fire. It must have been flaying her nerves exquisitely.

Yet he wanted to cry out because he did not feel what she was feeling, had no way to estimate his plight or the consequences of his own acts. His numbness had become too deadly—a peril to the world as well as to his friends and to Linden.

And still he did not stop.
It boots nothing to avoid his snares
— He went on as if he were trudging down into Vain’s black heart.

When the end came, he had no warning of it. Abruptly the First said, “We are here,” and her voice sent echoes upward like a flurry of frightened birds. The position of Pitchwife’s back changed. Covenant’s next step struck level stone.

He began to tremble violently with reaction and cold. But he heard Linden half sobbing far back in her throat as she groped toward him. He put his arms around her, strained her to him as if he would never be able to find any other way to say good-bye.

Only the muffled breathing of his companions told him that he and Linden were not alone. Even that quiet sound echoed like the awakening of something fatal.

He looked upward. At first, he saw no sign of the sky. The well was so deep that its opening was indiscernible. But a moment later light lanced into his eyes as the sun broached the Isle’s rim. His friends suddenly appeared beside him as if they had come leaping out of the dark, recreated from the raw cold of the gulf.

The First stood with her determination gripped in both hands. Pitchwife was at her side, grimacing. Supported by Honninscrave, Seadreamer clenched his despair between his teeth and glared whitely around him. Vain looked like an avatar of the gulf’s dark. Findail’s creamy robe seemed as bright as a torch.

Cail stood near Covenant and Linden with sunlight shining in his eyes. But Brinn was nowhere to be seen. The Guardian of the One Tree had left the cavern, carrying his promise not to interfere to its logical extreme. Or perhaps he did not want to watch what was about to happen to the people he had once served.

Reaching the floor of the well, the sun-line moved more slowly; but still it spread by noticeable degrees out from the western wall where the quest stood. Covenant’s eyes blurred. The light seemed to vacillate between vagueness and acuity, hope and doom. No one spoke. The atmosphere held them silent and motionless.

Without warning, tips of wood burst into view as the sun touched them. Gleaming like traceries of fire above the heads of the onlookers, twigs ran together to form branches. Boughs intersected and grew downward. In a slow rush like the flow of burning blood, all the boughs joined; and the trunk of the One Tree swept toward its roots in the floor of the gulf.

Limned and distinct against a background of shadow, the great Tree stood before the company like the progenitor of all the world’s wood.

It appeared to be enormous. The well had indeed widened as it descended, forming a space as large as a cavern to hold the Tree. The darkness which hid the far walls focused all the sunlight onto the center of the floor, so that the Tree dominated the air with every line and angle of its bright limbs. It was grand and ancient, clad in thick, knaggy bark like a mantle of age, and impossibly powerful.

And yet it had no leaves. Perhaps it had always been leafless. The bare stone was unmarked by any mold or clutter which might have come from the One Tree. Every branch and twig was stark, unwreathed. They would have looked dead if they had not been so vivid with light, The Tree’s massive roots had forced their way into the floor with gigantic strength, breaking the surface into jagged hunks which the roots embraced with the intimacy of lovers. The Tree appeared to draw its strength, its leafless endurance, from a subterranean cause that was as passionate as lava and as intractable as gutrock.

For a long moment, Covenant and his companions simply stood and stared. He did not think he could move. He was too close to the goal which he had desired and loathed across the wide seas. In spite of its light-etched actuality, it seemed unreal. If he touched it, it would evaporate into hallucination and madness.

But the sun was still moving. The configuration of the well made its traversal dangerously swift. The One Tree was fully lit now; the company was falling back into shadow. Soon the sun would reach the eastern wall; and then the Tree would begin to go out. Perhaps it would cease to exist when sunfire no longer burned along its limbs. He was suddenly afraid that he did not have much time.

“Now, Giantfriend,” the First whispered. Her tone was thick with awe. “It must be done now. While the light endures.”

“Yes.” Covenant’s voice caught in his throat, came out like a flinch. He was appalled by what he meant to do. Linden was the first woman he had met since the ordeal of his illness began who was able to love him. To lose her now—! But Brinn had said,
Hope and doom. Bear what must be borne
. He would die if he did not, would surely destroy what he loved if he did not.

Abruptly he raised his right arm, pointed at the Tree. The small twin scars on his forearm shone faintly. “There,” Above its gnarled trunk, the Tree was wide-boughed and encompassing. From one of the nearest limbs grew a long straight branch as thick as his wrist. It
ended in a flat stump as if the rest of it had been cut off. “I’ll take that one.”

Tension squirmed through him. He opened a shutter in his mind, let out a ray of power. A tiny flame appeared on his ring. It intensified until it was as incisive as a blade. There he held it, intending to use it to sever the branch.

Obscurely through the gloom, he saw Vain grinning.

“Wait.” Linden was not looking at him. She was not looking at anything. Her expression resembled the helpless immobility which had rendered her so vulnerable to Joan and Marid and Gibbon. She appeared small and lost, as if she had no right to be here. Her hands made weak pleading movements. Her head shook in denial. “There’s something else.”

“Linden—” Covenant began.

“Be swift, Chosen,” demanded the First. “The time flees.”

Linden stared blindly past the company and the Tree and the light. “Something else here.” She was raw with fear and self-coercion, “They’re connected—but they aren’t the same. I don’t know what it is. It’s too much. Nobody can look at it.” Paralysis or horror made her soft voice wild.

Covenant tried again urgently. “
Linden
.”

Her gaze left the One Tree, touched him and then cringed as if she could not bear the sight of what he meant to do. Her words seemed to congeal toward silence as she spoke them. “The Tree isn’t why nothing lives here. It doesn’t make the air smell like the end of the world. It doesn’t have that kind of power. There’s something else here.” Her vision was focused inward as if like the
Elohim
she were studying herself for answers. “Resting.”

Covenant faltered. He was torn between too many emotions. His ring burned like venom and potential Desecration. A cry he was unable to utter wrung his heart:

Help me! I don’t know what to do!

But he had already made his decision. The only decision of which he was capable. Go forward. Find out what happens. What matters. Who you are. Surely Linden would understand. He could not retreat from the compulsion of his own fear and loss.

When he looked at the First, she made a gesture that urged him toward the Tree.

Jerking himself into motion, he started forward.

At once, Seadreamer left the shadows. Trailed by Honninscrave’s soft groan of protest, the mute Giant sprang ahead of Covenant, blocked his way. All the light on his face was gathered around his scar. His head winced refusals from side to side. His fists were poised at his temples as if his brain were about to burst.

“No,” Covenant gritted—a warning of ire and empathy. “Don’t do this.”

The First was already at his side. “Are you mad?” she barked at Seadreamer. “The Giantfriend must act now, while the way is open.”

For an instant, Seadreamer burst into an incomprehensible pantomime. Then he took hold of himself. His respiration juddered as he forced himself to move slowly, making his meaning clear. With gestures as poignant as anguish, he indicated that Covenant must not touch the Tree. That would be disaster. He, Seadreamer, would attempt to take the branch.

Covenant started to object. The First stayed him. “Giantfriend, it is the Earth-Sight.” Pitchwife had joined the Swordmain. He stood as if he were prepared to wrestle Covenant in the name of Seadreamer’s
wishes. “In all the long ages of the Giants, no Earth-Sight has ever misled us.”

Out of the dark, Honninscrave cried, “He is my brother!” Suppressed tears occluded his voice. “Will you send him to die?”

The tip of the First’s sword wavered. Pitchwife watched her with all his attention, waiting for her decision. Covenant’s eyes flared back and forth between Honninscrave and Seadreamer. He could not choose between them.

Then Seadreamer hurled himself toward the One Tree.

“
No!
” The shout tore itself from Covenant’s chest. Not again! Not another sacrifice in my place! He started after the Giant with flame pounding in his veins.

Honninscrave exploded past him. Roaring, the Master charged in pursuit of his brother.

But Seadreamer was moving with a desperate precision, as if this also were something he had foreseen exactly. In three strides, he spun to meet Honninscrave. His feet planted themselves on the stone: his fist lashed out.

The blow caught Honninscrave like the kick of a Courser. He staggered backward against Covenant. Only Cail’s swift intervention kept the Master from crushing Covenant to the stone. The
Haruchai
deflected Honninscrave’s bulk to one side, heaved Covenant to the other.

Covenant saw Seadreamer near the Tree. The First’s command and Pitchwife’s cry followed him together, but did not stop him. Livid in sudden sunlight, he leaped up the broken rocks which the roots embraced. From that position, the branch Covenant had chosen hung within easy reach of his hands.

For an instant, he did not touch it. His gaze reached toward the company as if he were poised on the verge of immolation. Passions he could not articulate dismayed his face along the line of his scar.

Then he took hold of the branch near its base and strove to snap it from its bough.