The One Tree

did not comprehend. She had taken the burden of decision upon herself; but she lacked the experience and conviction-and the power-which had enabled Covenant to bear it. He ached constantly at the back of her mind, an untreated wound. Only her stubborn loyalty to herself kept her from retreating to the loneliness of her cabin, hiding there like a little girl with a dirty dress so that the responsibility would fall to somebody else.

On the morning of the fifth day after Starfare's Gem's escape from the Raw, she awakened in a mood of aggravated discomfiture, as if her sleep had been troubled by nightmares she could not remember. A vague apprehension nagged at the very limit of her senses, too far away to be grasped or understood. Fearing what she might learn, she asked Cail about Covenant. But the Haruchai reported no change. Anxiously, she left her cabin, went up to the afterdeck.

As she scanned the deck, her inchoate sense of trouble increased. The sun shone in the east with an especial brightness, as if it were intent on its own clarity; but still the air seemed as chill as a premonition. Yet nothing appeared amiss. Galewrath commanded the wheeldeck with gruff confidence. And the crewmembers were busy about the vessel, warping it against the vagaries of the wind.

The First, Honninscrave, and Seadreamer were nowhere to be seen. However, Pitchwife was at work near the aftermast, stirring the contents of a large stone vat. He looked up as Linden drew near him and winced at what he saw. “Chosen,” he said with an effort of good humour which was only partially successful, “were I less certain of our viands, I would believe that you have eaten badly and been made unwell. It is said that Sea and sun conduce to health and appetite-yet you wear the wan aspect of the sickbed. Are you ailed?”

She shook her head imprecisely. “Something-I can't figure it out. I feel a disaster coming. But I don't know-” Groping for a way to distract herself, she peered into the vat. “Is that more of your pitch? How do you make it?”

At that, he laughed, and his mirth came more easily. “Yes, Chosen. In all good sooth, this is my pitch. The vat is formed of dolomite, that it may not be fused as would the stone of Starfare's Gem. But as to the making of pitch-ah, that it skills nothing for me to relate. You are neither Giant nor wiver. And the power of pitch arises as does any other, from the essence of the adept who wields it. All power is an articulation of its wielder. There is no other source than life-and the desire of that life to express itself. But there must also be a means of articulation. I can say little but that this pitch is my chosen means. Having said that, I have left you scarce wiser than before.”

Linden shrugged away his disclaimer. “Then what you're saying,” she murmured slowly, “is that the power of wild magic comes from Covenant himself? The ring is just his-his means of articulation?”

He nodded. “I believe that to be sooth. But the means controls intimately the nature of what may be expressed. By my pitch I may accomplish nothing for the knitting of broken limbs, just as no theurgy of the flesh may seal stone as I do.”

Musing half to herself, she replied, “That fits. At least with what Covenant says about the Staff of Law. Before it was destroyed. It supported the Law by its very nature. Only certain kinds of things could be done with it.”

The malformed Giant nodded again; but she was already thinking something else. Turning to face him more directly, she demanded, 'But what about the Elohim? They don't need any means. They are power. They can express anything they want, any way they want. Everything they said to us-all that stuff about Seadreamer's voice and Covenant's venom, and how Earthpower isn't the answer to Despite. It was all a lie.' Her rage came back to her in a rush. She was trembling and white-knuckled before she could stop herself.

Pitchwife considered her closely. “Be not so hasty in your appraisal of these Elohim” His twisted features seemed to bear Seadreamer's pain and Covenant's loss as if they had been inflicted on him personally; yet he rejected their implications, refused to be what he appeared. “They are who they are-a high and curious people-and their might is matched and conflicted and saddened by their limitations.”

She started to argue; but he stopped her with a gesture that asked her to sit beside him against the base of the aftermast. Lowering himself carefully, he leaned his crippled back to the stone. When she joined him, her shoulder blades felt the sails thrumming through the mast. The vibrations tasted obscurely troubled and foreboding. They sent rumours along her nerves like precursors of something unpredictable. Starfare's Gem rolled with a discomforting irrhythm.

“Chosen,” Pitchwife said, “I have not spoken to you concerning my examination by the Elohim.”

She looked at him in surprise. The tale he had told during the first night out from the Raw had glossed over his personal encounters in the clachan as mere digressions. But now she saw that he had his own reasons for having withheld the story then-and for telling it now.

“At the parting of our company in Elemesnedene,” he said quietly, as if he did not wish to be overheard, “I was accorded the guidance of one who named himself Starkin. He was an Elohim of neither more nor less wonder than any other, and so I followed him willingly. Among the lovely and manifold mazements of his people, I felt I had been transported to the truest faery heart of all the legends which have arisen from that place. The Giants have held these Elohim in an awe bordering on sanctity, and that awe I learned to taste in my own mouth. Like Grimmand Honninscrave before me, I came to believe that any giving or restitution was feasible in that eldritch realm.”

The grotesque lines of his face were acute with memory as he spoke; yet his tone was one of calm surety, belying the suggestion that he had suffered any dismay.

“But then,” he went on, “Starkin turned momentarily from me, and my examination began. For when again he approached, he had altered his shape. He stood before me as another being altogether. He had put aside his robe and his lithe limbs and his features-had transformed even his stature-and now he wore the form and habiliments of a Giant.” Pitchwife sighed softly. 'In every aspect he had recreated himself flawlessly.

'He was myself.

'Yet not myself as you behold me, but rather myself as I might be in dreams. A Pitchwife of untainted birth and perfect growth. Withal that the image was mine beyond mistaking, he stood straight and tall above me, in all ways immaculately made, and beautiful with the beauty of Giants. He was myself as even Gossamer Glowlimn my love might desire me in her pity. For who would not have loved such a Giant, or desired him?

“Chosen”-he met Linden with his clear gaze-“there was woe in that sight. In my life I have been taught many things, but until that moment I had not been taught to look upon myself and descry that I was ugly. At my birth, a jest had been wrought upon me-a jest the cruelty of which Starkin displayed before me.”

Pain for him surged up in her. Only the simple peace of his tone and eyes enabled her to hold back her outrage. How had he borne it?

He answered squarely, “This was an examination which searched me to the depths of my heart. But at last its truth became plain to me. Though I stood before myself in all the beauty for which I might have lusted, it was not I who stood there, but Starkin. This Giant was manifestly other than myself, for he could not alter his eyes- eyes of gold that shed light, but gave no warmth to what they beheld. And my eyes remained my own. He could not see himself with my sight. Thus I passed unharmed through the testing he had devised for me.”

Studying him with an ache of empathy, Linden saw that he was telling the truth. His examination had given him pain, but no hurt. And his unscathed aspect steadied her, enabling her to see past her anger to the point of his story. He was trying to explain his perception that the Elohim could only be who they were and nothing else-that any might was defined and limited by its very nature. No power could transcend the strictures which made its existence possible.

Her ire faded as she followed Pitchwife's thinking. No power? she wanted to ask. Not even wild magic? Covenant seemed capable of anything. What conceivable stricture could bind his white fire? Was there in truth some way that Foul could render him helpless in the end?

The necessity of freedom, she thought. If he's already sold himself—

But as she tried to frame her question, her sense of disquiet returned. It intruded on her pulse; blood began to throb suddenly in her temples. Something had happened. Tension cramped her chest as she fumbled for perception.