The One Tree

Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and white gold wielder, leper and lover, who had taught her to treasure the danger of being human.

Dying here in front of her.

Her heart lurched wildly. The link trembled. She started to protest, No! But before the word reached utterance she changed it into something else. As she scrambled to her feet, she clawed at the bond of power connecting her to Covenant. Her senses raced back along the current of wild magic. It was all she had. She had to make it serve her, wrest it from his grasp if necessary, anything rather than permit his death. Striving with every fraction of her strength, she cried out across the distance:

“Covenant!”

The sound fell stillborn in the woods. She did not know how to make him hear her. She clung to the link, but it resisted her service. If she had had the entire facilities and staff of a modern emergency room at her immediate disposal, she would not have been able to save him. His grip on the wild magic was too strong. The effort of mastering it had made him strong. Despair made him strong. And she had never wielded power before. In a direct contest for control of his might, she was no match for him.

But her percipience still lived. She knew him in that way more intimately than she had ever known herself. She felt his fierce grief and extremity across the gap between worlds. She knew—

Knew how to reach him.

She did not stop to count the cost. There was no time. Madly, she hurled herself into the dying bonfire as if it were her personal caamora.

For one splintered instant, those yellow flames leaped at her flesh. Harbingers of searing shot along her nerves.

Then Covenant saw her peril. Instinctively, he tried to snatch her back.

At once, she took hold of the link with every finger of her passion. Guided by her senses, she began to fight her way toward the source of the connection.

The woods became as insubstantial as mist, then fell into shreds as the winds between the stars tugged through them. The stone under her feet evaporated into darkness. Covenant's prone form denatured, disappeared. She began to fall, as bright as a comet, into the endless chasm of the heavens.

As she hurtled, she strove to muster words. You've got to come with me! It's the only way I can save you! But suddenly the power was quenched as if Covenant himself had been snuffed out. Her spiritual plummet among the stars seemed to become a physical plunge, a fall from a height which no human body might endure. Her heart wanted to scream, but there was no air, had never been any air, her lungs could not support the ether through which she dropped. She had gone off the edge of her fate. No cry remained which would have made any difference.

Helpless to catch herself, she stumbled forward onto her face on the floor of the cavern. Her pulses raced, chest laboured. Reminders of the bonfire flushed over her skin. A moment passed before she was able to realize that she had suffered no hurt.

Hands came to her aid. She needed the help. Her brain was giddy with transcendent dread. The stone seemed to buck and tremor under her. But the hands lifted her upright. She read the nature of their strength: they were Haruchai hands, Cail's hands. She welcomed them.

But she was blind. The floor went on lurching. The Isle had begun to tremble like the presage of a convulsion. There was no light. The stars of the Worm's aura were gone. Covenant's fire was gone. Dazzled by powers and desperation, her eyes refused to adjust to the gloom. All her companions were invisible. They might have been slain.

She fought to see through the Worm's unquiet ambience; but when she looked beyond Cail, she found nothing but Seadreamer's corpse. He lay in Honninscrave's embrace near the base of the One Tree as if his valiant bones had been burned to cinders.

The sight wrung her. Cable Seadreamer, involuntary victim of Earth-Sight and muteness. He had done nothing with his life except give it away in an effort to save the people he most treasured. She had failed him, too.

But then she became aware of Honninscrave himself, realised that the Master was breathing in great, raw hunks of loss. He was alive. That perception seemed to complete her transition, bringing her fully back into the company of her friends. The gloom macerated slowly as her eyes swam into focus.

Softly, Pitchwife said, “Ah, Chosen. Chosen.” His voice was thick with rue.

A short distance from Honninscrave and Seadreamer, Covenant sat spread-legged on the stone. He appeared unconscious of the violence building in the roots of the Isle. He faced the unattainable Tree with his back bowed as if he had broken his spine.

The First and Pitchwife stood together, trapped between Covenant and Honninscrave by their inability to comfort either pain. She still gripped her sword, but it had become useless to her. Her husband's face was full of silent weeping.

Vain remained a few paces away, wearing his black smile as if the wooden ruin of his right forearm meant nothing to him. Only Findail was nowhere to be seen. He had fled the crisis of Covenant's fire. Linden did not care if he never returned.

Stiffly, she carried her appeal toward Covenant. Kneeling between his legs, she faced him and tried to lift the words into her throat. You've got to go back. But she was unable to speak. It was too late. His power-haunted gaze told her plainly that he already knew what she wanted to say.

“I can't.” His voice sifted into the dark like a falling of ashes. “Even if I could stand it. Abandon the Land. Let Foul have his way.” His face was only a blur in the gloom, a pale smear from which all hope had been erased. “It takes too much power. I'd break the Arch.”

Oh, Covenant!

She had nothing else to give him.

Twenty Seven: The Long Grief

LINDEN could barely discern her companions through the dimness: Honninscrave and dead Seadreamer; the First and Pitchwife; Vain and Call. They stood around her like deeper shadows in the pervading dark. But Covenant was the one she watched. The image of him supine on the verge of death with that knife in his chest was as vivid to her as the etchwork of acid. She saw that face-the features acute with agony, the skin waxen and pallid-more clearly than the gaunt visage before her. Its vague shape appeared mortally imprecise, as if its undergirding bones had been broken-as if he were as broken as the Land which Lord Foul had restored to him, as broken as Joan. All the danger had gone out of him.

But the company could not remain where it was. A sharper convulsion shook the stone, as if the Worm were nearly awake. A scattering of pebbles fell from the walls, filling the air with light echoes. There was little time left. Perhaps it would not be enough. Gently, Cail stooped to Covenant. “Ur-Lord, come. This Isle cannot hold. We must hasten for our lives.”

Linden understood. The Worm was settling back to its rest; and those small movements might tear the Isle apart at any moment. She had failed at everything else; but this exigency was within her grasp. She rose to her feet, extended her hands to help Covenant.

He refused her offer. For a moment, darkness blotted out his mien. When he spoke, his voice was muffled by defeat.

“I should've broken the link. Before you had time to see. But I didn't have the courage to let you go. I can't bear it.”

Yet he moved. In spite of everything, he heeded the company's need. Tortured and leprous, he climbed Call's support until he was upright.

Another shock staggered the cavern. But Linden kept her balance alone.

The First and Pitchwife went to Honninscrave. With firm care, they urged him erect. He would not release