The One Tree

For one heartbeat or two, nothing happened. Then the smear expanded, and the lucubrium began to turn. Slowly at first, then with vertiginous speed, the chamber spun. As it wheeled, the walls dissolved. The chair rose, though Kasreyn's compelling orb did not waver, Covenant went gyring into night.

But it was a night unlike any he had known before. It was empty of every star, every implication. Its world- spanning blackness was only a reflection of the inward void into which he fell. Kasreyn was driving him into himself.

He dropped like a stone, spinning faster and faster as the plunge lengthened. He passed through a fire which seared him-traversed tortures of knives until he fell beyond them. Still he sped down the gullet of the whirling, the nausea of his old vertigo. It impelled him as if it meant to hurl him against the blank wall of his doom.

Yet he saw everything, heard everything. Kasreyn's eye remained before him, impaling the smear of the lenses. In the distance, the Kemper's voice said sharply, “Slay him.” But the command was directed elsewhere, did not touch Covenant.

Then up from the bottom of the gyre arose images which Covenant feared to recognize. Kasreyn's gaze coerced them from the pit. They flew and yowled about Covenant's head as he fell.

The destruction of the Staff of Law.

Blood pouring in streams to feed the Banefire.

Memla and Linden falling under the na-Mhoram's Grim because he could not save them.

His friends trapped and doomed in the Sandhold. The quest defeated. The Land lying helpless under the Sunbane. All the Earth at Lord Foul's mercy.

Because he could not save them.

The Elohim had deprived him of everything which might have made a difference. They had rendered him helpless to touch or aid the people and the Land he loved.

Wrapped in his leprosy, isolated by his venom, he had become nothing more than a victim. A victim absolutely. The perceptions which poured into him from Kasreyn's orb seemed to tell the whole truth about him. The gyre swept him downward like an avalanche. It flung him like a spear, a bringer of death, into the pith of the void.

Then he might have broken. The wall defending him might have been pierced, leaving him as vulnerable as the Land to Kasreyn's eye. But at that moment, he heard a series of thuds. The sounds of combat; blows exchanged, gasp and grunt of impact. Two powerful figures were fighting nearby.

Automatically, reflexively, he turned his head to see what was happening.

With that movement, he broke Kasreyn's hold.

Freed from the distortion of the lenses,his vision reeled back into the lucubrium. He sat in the chair where the Kemper had bound him. The tables and equipment of the chamber were unchanged.

But the guard lay on the floor, coughing up the last of his life. Over The Husta stood Hergrom. He was poised to spring. Flatly, he said, 'Kemper, if you have harmed him you will answer for it with blood.'

Covenant saw everything. He heard everything.

Emptily, he said, 'Don't touch me.'

Sixteen: The gaddhi's Punishment

FOR a long time, Linden Avery could not sleep. The stone of the Sandhold surrounded her, limiting her percipience. The very walls seemed to glare back at her as if they strove to protect a secret cunning. And at the edges of her range moved the hustin like motes of ill. The miscreated Guards were everywhere, jailers for the Chatelaine as well as for the company. She had watched the courtiers at their banquet and had discerned that their gaiety was a performance upon which they believed their safety depended. But there could be no safety in the donjon which the Kemper had created for himself and his petulant gaddhi.

Her troubled mind longed for the surcease of unconsciousness. But underneath the wariness and alarm which the Sandhold inspired lay a deeper and more acute distress. The memory of the Kemper's geas squirmed in the pit of her heart. Kasreyn had simply looked at her through his ocular, and instantly she had become his tool, a mere adjunct of his intent. She had not struggled, had not even understood the need to struggle. His will had possessed her as easily as if she had been waiting for it all her life.

The Haruchai had been able to resist. But she had been helpless. Her percipient openness had left her no defence. She was unable to completely close the doors the Land had opened in her.

As a result, she had betrayed Thomas Covenant. He was bound to her by yearnings more intimate than anything she had ever allowed herself to feel for any man; and she had sold him as if he had no value to her. No, not sold; she had been offered nothing in return. She had simply given him away. Only Brinn's determination had saved him.

That hurt surpassed the peril of the Sandhold. It was the cusp of all her failures. She felt like a rock which had been struck too hard or too often. She remained superficially intact; but within her fault lines spread at every blow. She no longer knew how to trust herself.

In her bedchamber after the banquet, she mimicked sleep because Cail was with her. But his presence also served to keep her awake. When she turned her face to the wall, she felt his hard aura like a pressure against her spine, denying what little courage she had left. He, too, did not trust her.

Yet the day had been long and arduous; and at last weariness overcame her tension. She sank into dreams of stone-the irrefragable gutrock of Revelstone. In the hold of the Clave, she had tried to force herself bodily into the granite to escape Gibbon-Raver. But the stone had refused her. According to Covenant, the former inhabitants of the Land had found life and beauty in stone; but this rock had been deaf to every appeal. She still heard the Raver saying, The principal doom of the Land is upon your shoulders. Are you not evil? And she had cried out in answer, had been crying ever since in self-abomination, No! Never!

Then the voice said something else. It said, “Chosen, arise. The ur-Lord has been taken.”

Sweating nightmares, she flung away from the wall. Cail placed a hand on her shoulder; the wail which Gibbon had spawned sprang into her throat. But the door stood open, admitting light to the bedchamber. Cail's mien held no ill glee. Instinctively, she bit down her unuttered cry. Her voice bled as she gasped, “Taken?” The word conveyed nothing except inchoate tremors of alarm.

“The ur-Lord has been taken,” Cail repeated inflexibly. “The Lady Alif came for him in the Kemper's name. She has taken him.”

She stared at him, groped through the confusion of her dreams. “Why?”

Shadows accentuated Cail's shrug. “She said, 'Kasreyn of the Gyre desires speech with Thomas Covenant.' ”

Taken him. A knife-tip of apprehension trailed down her spine. “Is Brinn with him?”

The Haruchai did not falter. “No.”

At that, her eyes widened. “You mean you let — ?” She was on her feet. Her hands grabbed at his shoulders. “Are you crazy? Why didn't you call me?”

She was fractionally taller than he; but his flat gaze out-sized her. He did not need words to repudiate her.

“Oh goddamn it!” She tried to thrust him away, but the effort only shoved her backward. Spinning, she flung toward the door. Over her shoulder, she snapped, “You should've called me.” But she already knew his answer.

In the corridor, she found the Giants. Honninscrave and Seadreamer were straightening their sarks,