The One Tree

marshalling her percipience, she tried to penetrate the flat emptiness of his orbs, reach his mind. But she failed: within his head, her vision vanished into darkness. He was like a snuffed candle, and the only smoke curling up from the extinguished wick was his old clenched stricture:

“Don't touch me.”

She began to founder in that dark. Something of him must have remained sentient, otherwise he could not have continued to articulate his self-despite. But that relict of his consciousness was beyond her grasp. The darkness seemed to leech away her own light. She was falling into an emptiness as eternal and hungry as the cold void between the stars.

Savagely, she tore herself out of him.

Honninscrave and Seadreamer stood with the First at Covenant's back. Pitchwife knelt beside Linden, his huge hands cupping her shoulders in appeal. “Chosen.” His whisper ached among the trailing wisps of dark. “Linden Avery. Speak to us.”

She was panting in rough heaves. She could not find enough air. The featureless light of Elemesnedene suffocated her. The Elohim loomed claustrophobically around her, as unscrupulous as ur-viles. “You planned this,” she grated between gasps. “This is what you wanted all along.” She was giddy with extremity. “To destroy him.”

The First drew a sharp breath. Pitchwife's hands tightened involuntarily. Wincing to his feet as if he needed to meet his surprise upright, he lifted Linden erect. Honninscrave gaped at her. Seadreamer stood with his arms rigid at his sides, restraining himself from vision.

“Enough,” responded Infelice. Her tone was peremptory ice. “I will submit no longer to the affront of such false judgment. The Elohimfest has ended.” She turned away.

“Stop!” Without Pitchwife's support, Linden would have fallen like pleading to the bare ground. All her remaining strength went into her voice. “You've got to restore him! Goddamn it, you can't leave him like this!”

Infelice paused, but did not look back. “We are the Elohim. Our choices lie beyond your questioning. Be content.” Gracefully, she continued down the hillside.

Seadreamer broke into motion, hurled himself after her. The First and Honninscrave shouted, but could not halt him. Bereft of his wan, brief hope, he had no other outlet for his pain.

But Infelice heard or sensed his approach. Before he reached her, she snapped, “Hold, Giant!”

He rebounded as if he had struck an invisible wall at her back. The force of her command sent him sprawling.

With stately indignation, she faced him. He lay grovelling on his chest; but his lips were violent across his teeth, and his eyes screamed at her.

“Assail me not with your mistrust,” she articulated slowly, “lest I teach you that your voiceless Earth-Sight is honey and benison beside the ire of Elemesnedene”

“No.” By degrees, life was returning to Linden's limbs; but still she needed Pitchwife's support. “If you want to threaten somebody, threaten me. I'm the one who accuses you.”

Infelice looked at her without speaking.

“You planned all this,” Linden went on. “You demeaned him, dismissed him, insulted him-to make him angry enough so that he would let you into him and dare you to hurt him. And then you wiped out his mind. Now”-she gathered every shred of her vehemence-“restore it!”

“Sun-Sage,” Infelice said in a tone of glacial scorn, “you mock yourself and are blind to it.” Moving disdainfully, she left the eftmound and passed through the ring of dead trees.

On all sides, the other Elohim also turned away, dispersing as if Linden and her companions held no more interest for them-With an inchoate cry, Linden swung toward Covenant. For one wild instant, she intended to grab his ring, use it to coerce the Elohim.

The sight of him stopped her. The First had raised him to his feet. He stared through Linden as though she and everything about her had ceased to exist for him; but his empty refrain sounded like an unintentional appeal.

“Don't touch me.”

Oh, Covenant! Of course she could not take his ring. She could not do that to him, if for no other reason than because it was what the Elohim wanted. Or part of what they wanted. She ached in protest, but her resolve had frayed away into uselessness again. A surge of weeping rose up in her; she barely held it back. What have they done to you?

“Is it sooth?” the First whispered to the ambiguous sky. “Have we gained this knowledge at such a cost to him?”

Linden nodded dumbly. Her hands made fumbling gestures. She had trained them to be a physician's hands, and now she could hardly contain the yearning to strangle. Covenant had been taken from her as surely as if he had been slain-murdered like Nassic by a blade still hot with cruelty. She felt that if she did not move, act, stand up for herself somehow, she would go mad.

Around her, the Giants remained still as if they had been immobilized by her dismay. Or by the loss of Covenant, of his determination. No one else could restore the purpose of the quest.

That responsibility gave Linden what she needed. Animated by preterite stubbornness, she lurched down the hillside to find if Seadreamer had been harmed.

He was struggling to his feet. His eyes were wide and stunned, confused by Earth-Sight. He reeled as if he had lost all sense of balance. When Honninscrave hastened to his side, he clung to the Master's shoulder as if it were the only stable point in a breaking world. But Linden's percipience found no evidence of serious physical hurt. Yet the emotional damage was severe. Something in him had been torn from its moorings by the combined force of his examination, the loss of the hope his brother had conceived for him, and Covenant's plight. He was caught in straits for which all relief had been denied; and he bore his Earth-Sight as if he knew that it would kill him.

This also was something Linden could not cure. She could only witness it and mutter curses that had no efficacy.

Most of the bells had receded into the background, but two remained nearby. They were arguing together, satisfaction against rue. Their content was accessible now, but Linden no longer had any wish to make out the words. She had had enough of Chant and Daphin.

Yet the two came together up the eftmound toward her, and she could not ignore them. They were her last chance. When they faced her, she aimed her bitterness straight into Daphin's immaculate green gaze.

“You didn't have to do that. You could've told us where the One Tree is. You didn't have to possess him. And then leave him like that”

Chant's hard eyes held a gleam of insouciance. His inner voice sparkled with relish.

But Daphin's mind had a sad and liquid tone as she returned Linden's glare. “Sun-Sage, you do not comprehend our Wurd. There is a word in your tongue which bears a somewhat similar meaning. It is 'ethic.' ”

Jesus God! Linden rasped in sabulous denial. But she kept herself still.

“In our power,” Daphin went on, 'many paths are open to us which no mortal may judge or follow. Some are attractive-others, distasteful. Our present path was chosen because it offers a balance of hope and harm. Had we considered only ourselves, we would have selected a path of greater hope, for its severity would have fallen not upon us but upon you. But we have determined to share with you the cost. We risk our hope. And also that which is more precious to us-life, and the meaning of life. We risk trust.

“Therefore some among us”-she did not need to refer openly to Chant-“urged another road. For who are you, that we should hazard trust and life upon you? Yet our Wurd remains. Never have we sought the harm of any life. Finding no path of hope which was not also a path of harm, we chose the way of balance and shared cost. Do not presume to judge us, when you conceive so little the import of your own acts. The fault is not ours that Sun- Sage and ring-wielder came among us as separate beings.”

Oh, hell, Linden muttered. She had no heart left to ask

Daphin what price the Elohim were paying for Covenant's emptiness. She could think of no commensurate expense. And the timbre of the bells told her that Daphin would give no explicit answer. She did not care to waste any more of her scant strength on arguments or expostulations. She wanted nothing except to turn her back on the Elohim, get Covenant out of this place.

As if in reply, Chant said, “In good sooth, it is past time. Were the choice in my hands, your expulsion from