The One Tree

wrong kind. Or it can't be controlled. It terrifies me.”

“Covenant.” She did not want to say harsh things to him, ask questions which hurt. But she had never seen him evade anything which might prove harsh or painful; and she wanted to match him, show herself a fit companion for him. “Tell me about the necessity of freedom.”

He stiffened slightly, raised his eyebrows at the unexpected direction of her thoughts. But he did not object. “We've talked about this before,” he said slowly. 'It's hard to explain. I guess the question is, are you a person- with volition and maybe some stubbornness and at least the capacity if not the actual determination to do something surprising-or are you a tool? A tool just serves its user. It's only as good as the skill of its user, and it's not good for anything else. So if you want to accomplish something special-something more than you can do for yourself-you can't use a tool. You have to use a person and hope the surprises will work in your favour. You have to use something that's free to not be what you had in mind.

“That's what it comes down to on both sides. The Creator wants to stop Foul. Foul wants to break the Arch of Time. But neither of them can use a tool, because a tool is just an extension of who they are, and if they could get what they wanted that way they wouldn't need anything else. So they're both trying to use us. The only difference I can see is that the Creator doesn't manipulate. He just chooses and then takes his chances. But Foul is something else. How free are we?”

“No.” Linden did her best to face him without flinching. “Not we.” She did not want to hurt him; but she knew it would be false love if she tried to spare him. “You're the one with the ring. How free are you? When you took Joan's place-” Then she stopped. She did not have the heart to finish that sentence.

He understood. Her unspoken words echoed the pang of his own fear. “I'm not sure.” Once again, his gaze left her, not to avoid her, but to follow the catenations of his memories.

But she was not done, and what remained to be said was too difficult to wait. “After the Elohimfest. When I tried to get inside you.” She spoke in pieces, feeling unable to pick up all the fragments at once. With a shudder of recollection, she strove for clarity. 'It was the same day Findail showed up. I was waiting-hoping you would recover spontaneously. But then I couldn't wait any longer. If nothing else, I thought you would be able to get answers out of him.'

She closed her eyes, shutting out the way he looked at her. “But I only got so far.” Dark and hungry for power, she had tried to take mastery of him. And now the virulence of the result came back to her. She began rocking unconsciously against the faint sway of the hammock, seeking to comfort herself, persuade her memories into language. “Then I was thrown out. Or I threw myself out. To escape what I saw.” Aching, she described her vision of him as a Sunbane-victim, as monstrous and abominable as Marid.

At once, she sought his face as if it were an image to dispel dismay. He was watching her sharply, ire and dread conflicted in his gaze. With a harshness she did not intend and could not suppress, she rasped, “Can you really tell me you aren't already sold? You aren't already a tool of the Despiser?”

“Maybe I'm not.” The lines of his face became implacable, as if she had driven him beyond reach, compelled him to retreat to the granite foundation of his pain and isolation. His voice sounded as cold as leprosy. “Maybe the Elohim just think I am. Maybe what you saw is just their image of me.” Then his features clenched. He shook his head in self-coercion. “No. That's just one more cheap answer.” Slowly, his grimace softened like a chosen vulnerability, exposing himself to her. “Maybe Findail's right. I ought to give him my ring. Or give it to you. Before it's too late. But I'll be goddamned if I'm going to surrender like that. Not while I still have hopes left.”

Hopes? she mouthed silently. But he was already replying.

“You're one. That old man on Haven Farm chose you. He told you Be true. You're still here, and you're willing, and that's one. What you just told me is another. If what you saw is the truth-if I really am Foul's tool or victim-then I can't stop him. But he won't be able to use me to get what he wants.”

Roughly, he jerked himself to a stop, paused to give her a chance to consider the implications of what he was saying. That Lord Foul's purposes did in fact revolve around her. That the onus of the Earth's survival rested on her in ways which she could not begin to envision. That she was being manipulated To achieve the ruin of the Earth.

For a moment, the conception froze her, brought back fear to the sunlit cabin. But then Covenant was speaking again, answering her apprehension.

“And there's one more. One more hope.” His tone was softer now, almost tender-suffused with sorrow and recognition. 'I told you I've been to the Land three times before. In a way, it was four, not three. The first three times, I didn't have any choice. I was summoned whether I wanted to go or not. After the first time, I didn't want to.

'But the third was the worst. I was in the woods behind the Farm, and there was this little girl who was about to get bitten by a timber-rattler. I went to try to save her. But I fell. The next thing I knew, I was halfway into Revelstone, and Mhoram was doing his damnedest to finish summoning me.

'I refused. That girl was in the real world, and the snake was going to kill her. That was more important to me than anything else, no matter what happened to the Land.

“When I told Mhoram about her”-his voice was a clench of loss-“he let me go.” The tension of his arms and shoulders seemed to echo, Mhoram.

Yet he forced himself to continue. “I got back too late to stop the snake. But the girl was still there. I managed to suck out some of the venom, and then somehow I got her back to her parents. By that time, the fourth summoning had already started. And I accepted it. I went by choice. There wasn't anything else I wanted except one last chance to fight Foul.”

He was gazing up at Linden squarely now, letting her see his unresolved contradictions, his difficult and ambiguous answers. “Did I sell myself to Foul by refusing Mhoram? Or to the Creator by accepting that last summons? I don't know. But I think that no human being can be made into a tool involuntarily. Manipulated into destruction, maybe. Misled or broken. But if I do what Foul wants, it'll be because I failed somehow-misunderstood something, surrendered to my own inner Despiser, lost courage, fell in love with power or destruction, something.” He articulated each word like an affirmation. “Not because I'm anybody's tool.”

“Covenant.” She yearned toward him past the gentle ship-roll swaying of the hammock. She saw him now as the man she had first met, the figure of strength and purpose who had persuaded her against her will to accept his incomprehensible vision of Joan and possession, and then had drawn her like a lover in his wake when he had gone to meet the crisis of Joan's redemption-as the upright image of power and grief who had broken open the hold of the Clave to rescue her, and later had raised a mere bonfire in The Grieve to the stature of a caamora for the long-dead Unhomed. She said his name as if to ascertain its taste in her mouth. Then she gave him her last secret, the last piece of information she had consciously withheld from him.

“I haven't told you everything that old man said to me. On Haven Farm. He told me Be true. But that wasn't all.” After the passage of so much time, she still knew the words as if they had been incused on her brain. “He said, 'Ah, my daughter, do not fear. You will not fail, however he may assail you.' ” Meeting Covenant's gaze, she tried to give her eyes the clarity her voice lacked. “ 'There is also love in the world.' ”

For a moment, he remained motionless, absorbing the revelation. Then he lifted his half-hand toward her. His flesh gleamed in the sunshine which angled into the cabin from the open port. The wry lift at the corners of his mouth counterpoised the dark heat of his orbs as he said, “Can you believe it? I used to be impotent. Back when I thought leprosy was the whole story.”

In reply, she rolled over the edge of the hammock, dropped her feet to the stepladder. Then she took his hand, and he drew her down into the light.

Later, they went out on deck together. They did not wear their own clothes, but rather donned short robes of gray, flocked wool which one of the Giants had sewn for them-left behind their old apparel as if they had sloughed off at least one layer of their former selves. The bulk of the robes was modest and comfortable; but still his awareness of her was plain in his gaze. Barefoot on the stone as if they had made their peace with the Giantship, they left her cabin, ascended to the afterdeck.

Then for a time Linden felt that she was blushing like a girl. She strove to remain detached; but she could