The One Tree

But Covenant seemed scarcely aware that she had not left the cabin. His gaze was fixed on the stone above him, and he was wrestling with his own conception of what had happened to him. When he spoke, his voice ached with trouble.

“It's getting worse.”

His arms were hugged over his chest as if to protect the scar of his old knife-wound.

“Foul is doing everything he can to teach me power. That's what this venom is all about. The physical consequences are secondary. The main thing is spiritual. Every time I become delirious, that venom eats away my restraint. The part of me that resists being so dangerous. That's why-why everything. Why that Raver got us into trouble in Mithil Stonedown. Why we've been attacked over and over again. Why Gibbon risked showing me the truth in that soothtell. Part of the truth.”

Abruptly, he shifted in the hammock, raised his right hand. “Look.” When he clenched his fist, white fire burst from his knuckles. He brought it to a brightness that almost dazzled Linden, then let it drop. Panting, he relaxed in the hammock.

“I don't need a reason anymore.” He was trembling. 'I can do that more easily than getting out of bed. I'm a timebomb.

He's making me more dangerous than he is. When I explode-“ His visage contorted in dismay. ”I'll probably kill everybody who has any chance of fighting him. I almost did it this time. Next time-or the time after that-'

His exigency was vivid in him; but still he did not look at her. He seemed to fear that if he looked at her the peril would reach out to doom her as well. 'It's happening to me. The same thing that ruined Kevin. Broke the Bloodguard Vow. Butchered the Unhomed. I'm becoming what I hate. If I keep going like this, I'll kill you all. But I can't stop it. Don't you understand? I don't have your eyes. I can't see what I need to fight the venom. Something physical-my wrists-or my chest-that's different. My nerves are still alive enough for that. But I don't have the health-sense.

“That's probably the real point of the Sunbane. To cripple the Earthpower so I won't be healed, won't become able to see what you see. Everyone here has already lost it. You have it because you come from outside. You weren't shaped by the Sunbane. And I would have it. If I weren't-”

He snatched back what he had been about to say. But his tension poured from him like anguish, and he could not refrain from turning his distress toward her. His gaze was stark, blood-ridden, haunted; his eyes were wounds of understanding. And the depth of his self-dread caught at her throat, so that she could not have spoken, even if she had known how to comfort him.

“That's why I've got to get to the One Tree. Got to. Before I become too deadly to go on living. A Staff of Law is my only hope.” Fatality stalked through his tone. He had his own nightmares-dreams as heinous and immedicable as hers. “If we don't do it in time, this venom will take over everything, and there won't be any of us left to even care what happens to the Land, much less fight.”

She gaped at him, at the implications of what he was saying. In the past, he had always spoken of needing a Staff for the Land-or for her, to return her to her own life. She had not grasped the true extent of his personal exigency. Behind all his other commitments, he was wrestling for a way to save himself. That was why the movement of the ship when the Giants snared the Nicor had been able to reach him. It had restored his most fundamental hope: the One Tree. Restitution for the harm he had wrought when he had destroyed the old Staff. And escape from the logic of his venom. No wonder he looked so ravaged. She did not know how he endured it.

But he must have misunderstood her silence. He returned his gaze to the ceiling. When he spoke again, his voice was flat with bitterness.

“That's why you're here.”

She winced as if he had struck her. But he did not see her.

“That old man-the one you met on Haven Farm. You said you saved his life.” That was true. And he had spoken to her. But she had never told Covenant all the old man had said. 'He chose you for your eyes. And because you're a doctor. You're the only one in this whole mess who can even grasp what's happening to me, never mind do anything about it.

“And Foul-” he continued dismally. “If Gibbon was telling the truth. Not just trying to scare you. Foul chose you because he thinks he can make you fail. He thinks you can be intimidated. That's why Gibbon touched you. Why Marid jumped at you first. To set you up for failure. So that you won't help me. Or won't do the right thing when you try. He knows how vulnerable I am. How long I've needed-”

Without warning, his voice sharpened in pure protest. 'Because you're not afraid of me! If you were afraid, you wouldn't be here. None of this would've happened to you. It would all be different.

“Hell and blood, Linden!” Suddenly, he was shouting with all the scant strength of his convalescence. “You're the only woman in the world who doesn't look at me like I'm some kind of reified crime! Damn it, I've paid blood to try to spare you everything I can. I killed twenty-one people to rescue you from Revelstone! But I can't reach you. What in hell do you-”

His passion broke her out of her silence. She interrupted him as if she were furious at him; but her ire was running in a different direction.

“I don't want to be spared. I want reasons. You tell me why I'm here, and it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't have anything to do with me. So I'm a doctor from outside the Land. So what? So is Berenford, but this didn't happen to him. I need a better reason than that. Why me? ”

For an instant, he glared reflections of sunlight at her. But her words seemed to penetrate him by degrees, forcing him backward muscle by muscle until he was lying limp in the hammock again. He appeared exhausted. She feared that he would not be able to find the strength to tell her to get out of his cabin. But then he surprised her as he had so often surprised her in the past. After all this time, she still could not estimate the workings of his mind,

“Of course you're right,” he murmured, half musing to himself. 'Nobody can ever spare anybody else. I've got so much power-I keep forgetting it isn't good for what I want. It's never enough. Just a more complicated form of helplessness. I should know better. I've been on this kind of journey before.

“I can't tell you why you.” He appeared too weary or defeated to raise his head. 'I know something about the needs that drive people into situations like this. But I don't know your needs. I don't know you. You were chosen for this because of who you are, but from the beginning you haven't told me a thing. My life depends on you, and I don't really have any idea what it is I'm depending on.

“Linden.” He appealed to her without looking at her, as if he feared that his gaze would send her away. “Please. Stop defending yourself. You don't have to fight me. You could make me understand.” Deliberately, he closed his eyes against the risk he was taking. “If you chose to.”

Again she wanted to refuse him. The habit of flight ran deep in her. But this was why she had come to him. Her need was too clear to be denied.

Yet the question was so intimate that she could not approach it directly. Perhaps if she had not heard Pitchwife's tale she would not have been able to approach it at all. But his example had galvanized her to this hazard. He had the courage to relive his own past. And his story itself, the story of the First's father-

“Sometimes,” she said, though she was hardly ready to begin, “I have these black moods.” There was a chair near her; but she remained standing rigidly. “I've had them ever since I was a girl. Since my father died. When I was eight. They feel like-I don't know how to describe them. Like I'm drowning and there's nothing I can do to save myself. Like I could scream forever and nobody would hear me.” Powerless. 'Like the only thing I can do to help myself is just die and get it over with., ,

'That's what I started feeling after we left Coercri. It piled up the way it always does, and I never know why it comes when it does or why it goes away again. But this time was different. It felt the same to me-but it was different. Or maybe what you said is true-when we were on Kevin's Watch. That here the things inside us are externalized, so we meet them as if they were somebody else. What I was feeling was that Raver.

“So maybe there is a reason why I'm here.” She could not stop now, though an invidious trembling cramped her chest. “Maybe there's a connection between who I am and what Foul wants.” She almost gagged on the memory of Gibbon's touch; but she knotted her throat to keep the nausea down. 'Maybe that's why I freeze. Why I get so scared. I've spent my whole life trying to prove it isn't true. But it goes too deep.