The One Tree

splattered thickly, staining his linen. His hands fluttered at the husta'? face. Then he tried to turn the Guard over onto its back; but it was too heavy for him. His hands came away covered with blood. He stared at them, gazed blindly up at the crowd around him. His mouth trembled. “My Guard.” He sounded like a bereaved child. “Who has slain my Guard?”

For a moment, the lucubrium was intense with silence. Then Hergrom stepped forward. Linden felt peril thronging in the air. She tried to call him back. But she was too late. Hergrom acknowledged his responsibility to spare his companions from the gaddhi's wrath.

Hustin continued to arrive. The Giants and Haruchai held themselves ready; but they were weaponless and outnumbered.

Slowly, Rant Absolain's expression focused on Hergrom. He arose from his knees, dripping gouts of blood. For a moment, he stared at Hergrom as if he were appalled by the depth of the Haruchai's crime. Then he said, “Kemper.” His voice was a snarl of passion in the back of his throat. Grief and outrage gave him the stature he had lacked earlier. “Punish him.”

Kasreyn moved among the Guards and questers, went to stand near Rant Absolain. “O gaddhi, blame him not.” The Kemper's self-command made him sound telic rather than contrite. “The fault is mine. I have made many misjudgments.”

At that, the gaddhi broke like an over-stretched rope.

“I want him punished!” With both fists, he hammered at Kasreyn's chest, pounding smears of blood into the yellow robe. The Kemper recoiled a step; and Rant Absolain turned to hurl his passion at Hergrom. “That Guard is mine! Mine! Then he faced Kasreyn again. ”In all Bhrathairealm, I possess nothing! I am the gaddhi, and the gaddhi is only a servant!“ Rage and self-pity writhed in him. ”The Sandhold is not mine! The Riches are not mine! The Chatelaine attends me only at your whim!“ He stooped to the dead husta and scooped up handfuls of the congealing fluid, flung them at Kasreyn, at Hergrom. A gobbet trickled and fell from Kasreyn's chin, but he ignored it. ”Even my Favoured come to me from you! After you have used them!“ Rant Absolain's fists jerked blows through the air. ”But the Guard is mine! They alone obey me without looking first to learn your will!“ With a shout, he concluded, ”I want him punished!'

Rigid as madness, he faced the Kemper. After a moment, Kasreyn said, “O gaddhi, your will is my will.” His tone was suffused with regret. As he stepped slowly, ruefully, toward Hergrom, the tension concealed within his robe conveyed a threat. “Hergrom-” Linden began. Then her throat locked on the warning. She did not know what the threat was.

Her companions braced themselves to leap to Hergrom's aid. But they, too, could not define the threat.

The Kemper stopped before Hergrom, studied him briefly. Then Kasreyn lifted his ocular to his left eye. Linden tried to relax. The Haruchai had already proven themselves impervious to the Kemper's geas. Hergrom's flat orbs showed no fear.

Gazing through his eyepiece, Kasreyn reached out with careful unmenace and touched his index finger to the centre of Hergrom's forehead.

Hergrom's only reaction was a slight widening of his eyes.

The Kemper dropped both hands, sagged as if in weariness or sorrow. Without a word, he turned away. The Guards parted for him as he went to the chair where Covenant had been bound. There he seated himself, though he could not lean back because of the child he carried. With his fingers, he hid his face as if he were mourning.

But to Linden the emotion he concealed felt like glee.

She was unsure of her perception. The Kemper was adept at disguising the truth about himself. But Rant Absolain's reaction was unmistakable. He was grinning in fierce triumph.

His mouth moved as if he wanted to say something that would crush the company, demonstrate his own superiority; but no words came to him. Yet his passion for the Guards sustained him. He might indeed have been a monarch as he moved away. Commanding the hustin to follow him, he took the Lady Alif by the hand and left the lucubrium.

As she started downward, the Lady cast one swift look like a pang of regret toward Linden. Then she was gone, and the Guards were thumping down the iron stairs behind her. Two of them bore their dead fellow away.

None of the questers shifted while the hustin filed from the chamber. Vain's bland ambiguous smile was a reverse image of Findail's alert pain. The First stood with her arms folded over her chest, glaring like a hawk. Honninscrave and Seadreamer remained poised nearby. Brinn had placed Covenant at Linden's side, where the four Haruchai formed a cordon around the people they had sworn to protect.

Linden held herself rigid, pretending severity. But her sense of peril did not abate.

The Guards were leaving. Hergrom had suffered no discernible harm. In a moment, Kasreyn would be alone with the questers. He would be in their hands. Surely he could not defend himself against so many of them. Then why did she feel that the survival of the company had become so precarious?

Brinn gazed at her intently. His hard eyes strove to convey a message without words. Intuitively, she understood him.

The last husta was on the stairs. The time had almost come. Her knees were trembling. She flexed them slightly, sought to balance herself on the balls of her feet.

The Kemper had not moved. From within the covert of his hands, he said in a tone of rue, or cleverly mimicked rue, “You may return to your rooms. Doubtless the gaddhi will later summon you. I must caution you to obey him. Yet I would you could credit that I regret all which has transpired here.”

The moment had come. Linden framed the words in her mind. Time and again, she had dreamed of slaying Gibbon-Raver. She had even berated Covenant for his restraint in Revelstone. She had said, Some infections have to be cut out. She had believed that. What was power for, if not to extirpate evil? Why else had she become who she was?

But now the decision was upon her-and she could not speak. Her heart leaped with fury at everything Kasreyn had done, and still she could not speak. She was a doctor, not a killer. She could not give Brinn the permission he wanted.

His mien wore an inflectionless contempt as he turned his back on her. Mutely, he referred his desires to the leadership of the First.

The Swordmain did not respond. If she were aware of her opportunity, she elected to ignore it. Without a word to the Kemper or her companions, she strode to the stairs.

Linden gave a dumb groan of relief or regret, she did not know which.

A faint frown creased Brinn's forehead. But he did not hesitate. When Honninscrave had followed the First, Brinn and Hergrom took Covenant downward. At once, Cail and Ceer steered Linden toward the stairs. Seadreamer placed himself like a bulwark behind the Haruchai. Leaving Vain and Findail to follow at their own pace, the company descended from Kemper's Pitch. Clenched in a silence like a fist, they returned to their quarters in the Second Circinate.

Along the way, they encountered no Guards. Even The Majesty was empty of hustin.

The First entered the larger chamber across the hall from the bedrooms. While Linden and the others joined the Swordmain, Ceer remained in the passage to ward the door.

Brinn carefully placed Covenant on one of the settees. Then he confronted the First and Linden together. His impassive voice conveyed a timbre of accusation to Linden's hearing.

“Why did we not slay the Kemper? There lay our path to safety.”

The First regarded him as if she were chewing her tongue for self-command. A hard moment passed between them before she replied, “The hustin number fourscore hundred. The Horse, fifteenscore. We cannot win our way with bloodshed.”

Linden felt like a cripple. Once again, she had been too paralyzed to act; contradictions rendered her useless. She could not even spare herself the burden of supporting Brinn.