The One Tree

Elemesnedene would long since have silenced your ignorant tongue.” His tone was nonchalant; but his eyes shone with suppressed glee and cunning. “Does it please your pride to depart now, or do you wish to utter more folly ere you go?”

Clearly, Daphin chimed:

— Chant, this does not become you. But he replied:

— I am permitted. They can not now prevent us.

Linden's shoulders hunched, unconsciously tensing in an effort to strangle the intrusion in her mind. But at that moment, the First stepped forward. One of her hands rested on the hilt of her broadsword. She had leashed herself throughout the Elohimfest; but she was a trained Swordmain, and her face now wore an iron frown of danger and battle. “Elohim, there remains one question which must be answered.”

Linden stared dumbly at the First. She felt that nothing remained to the company except questions; but she had no idea which one the First meant.

The First spoke as if she were testing her blade against an unfamiliar opponent. “Perhaps you will deign to reveal what has become of Vain?”

Vain?

For an instant, Linden quailed. Too much had happened. She could not bear to think about another perfidy. But there was no choice. She would crack if she did not keep moving, keep accepting the responsibility as It came.

She cast a glance around the eftmound; but she already knew that she would see no sign of the Demondim-spawn. In a whirl of recollection, she realised that Vain had never come to the Elohimfest. She had not seen him since the company had separated to be examined. No: she had not seen him since the expulsion of the Haruchai. At the time, his absence had troubled her unconsciously; but she had not been able to put a name to her vague sense of incompleteness.

Trembling suddenly, she faced Chant. He had said as clearly as music, They can not now prevent us. She had assumed that he referred to Covenant; but now his veiled glee took on other implications.

“That's what you were doing.” Comprehension burned through her. “That's why you provoked Cail-why you kept trying to pick fights with us. To distract us from Vain.” And Vain had walked into the snare with his habitual undiscriminating blankness.

Then she thought again, No. That's not right. Vain had approached the clachan with an air of excitement, as if the prospect of it pleased him. And the Elohim had ignored him from the beginning, concealing their intent against him.

“What in hell do you want with him?”

Chant's pleasure was plain. 'He was a peril to us. His dark makers spawned him for our harm. He was an offense to our Wurd, directed with great skill and malice to coerce us from our path. This we will never endure, just as we have not endured your anile desires. We have imprisoned him.

“We wrought covertly,” he went on like laughter, “to avoid the mad ire of your ring-wielder. But now that peril has been foiled. Your Vain we have imprisoned, and no foolish beseechment or petty mortal indignation will effect his release.” His eyes shone. “Thus the umbrage you have sought to cast upon us is recompensed. Consider the justice of your loss and be still.”

Linden could not bear it. Masking her face with severity so that she would not betray herself, she sprang at him.

He stopped her with a negligent gesture, sent her reeling backward. She collided with Covenant; and he sprawled to the hard ground, making no effort to soften the impact. His face pressed the dirt.

The Giants had not moved. They had been frozen by Chant's gesture. The First fought to draw her falchion. Seadreamer and Honninscrave tried to attack. But they were held motionless.

Linden scrambled to Covenant's side, heaved him upright. “Please.” She pleaded with him uselessly, as if Chant's power had riven her of her wits. “I'm sorry. Wake up. They've got Vain.”

But he might as well have been deaf and senseless. He made no effort to clean away the dirt clinging to his slack lips.

Emptily, he responded to impulses utterly divorced from her and the Giants and the Elohim:

“Don't touch me.”

Cradling him, she turned to appeal one last time to Daphin's compassion. Tears streaked her face.

But Chant forestalled her. “It is enough,” he said sternly. “Now begone.”

At that moment, he took on the stature of his people. His stance was grave and immitigable. She receded from him; but as the distance between them increased, he grew in her sight, confusing her senses so that she seemed to fall backward into the heavens. For an instant, he shone like the sun, burning away her protests. Then he was the sun, and she caught a glimpse of blue sky before the waters of the fountain covered her like weeping.

She nearly lost her balance on the steep facets of the travertine. Covenant's weight dragged her toward a fall. But at once Cail and Brinn came leaping through the spray to her aid. The water in their hair sparkled under the midday sun as if they-or she-were still in the process of transformation between Elemesnedene and the outer maidan.

The suddenness of the change dizzied her. She could not find her balance behind the sunlight as the Haruchai helped her and Covenant down the slope, through the gathering waters to dry ground. They did not speak, expressed no surprise; but their mute tension shouted at her from the contact of their hard hands. She had sent them away.

The sun seemed preternaturally bright. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the featureless lumination of Elemesnedene. Fiercely, she scrubbed at her face, trying to clear away the water and the glare as if she wanted to eradicate every suggestion of tears or weeping from her visage.

But Brinn caught hold of her wrists. He stood before her like an accusation. Ceer and Hergrom braced Covenant between them.

The four Giants had emerged from the trough around the fountain. They stood half-dazed in the tall yellow grass of the maidan as if they had just wandered out of a dream which should not have been a nightmare. The First clutched her broadsword in both fists, but it was of no use to her. Pitchwife s deformity appeared to have been accentuated. Seadreamer and Honninscrave moved woodenly together, linked by their pain.

But Brinn did not permit Linden to turn away. Inflectionlessly, he demanded, “What harm has been wrought upon the ur-Lord?”

She had no answer to the accusation in his stare. She felt that her sanity had become uncertain. To herself, she sounded like a madwoman as she responded irrelevantly, “How long were we in there?”

Brinn rejected the importance of her question with a slight shake of his head. “Moments only. We had hardly ceased our attempts to re-enter the clachan when you returned.” His fingers manacled her. “What harm has been wrought upon the ur-Lord?”

Oh my God, she groaned. Covenant so sorely damaged. Vain lost. Gifts refused. Moments only? It was true: the sun had scarcely moved at all since her last glimpse of it before entering Elemesnedene. That so much pain could have been committed in such a little time!

“Let me go.” The plaint of a lorn and frightened child. “I've got to think.”

For a moment, Brinn did not relent. But then Pitchwife came to her side. His misshapen eyes yearned on her behalf. In a hobbled tone, he said, “Release her. I will answer as best I may.”

Slowly, Brinn unlocked his fingers; and Linden slumped into the grass.

She huddled there with her face hidden against her knees. Old, familiar screams echoed in her, cries which no one had been able to hear until long after her father had bled to death. Tears squeezed from her eyes like involuntary self-recrimination.

The voices of her companions passed back and forth over her head. Pitchwife began to recount the events in Elemesnedene; but shortly the demand for brevity dismayed his Giantish instincts, and he trailed off into directionless protests, The First took the task from him. Tersely, she detailed what she knew of