The One Tree

reeled into focus on Hergrom and Ceer. They stood in the sand with the rope sprawled around them. The gaddhi's medallion lay between their feet. They were looking upward.

“Run!” she cried. “The gates! Get to the gates!”

She heard a muffled blow behind her. A spearpoint pricked the back of her neck, pinning her against the stone.

Covenant was repeating his litany as if he could not get anyone to listen to him.

“Speak, slayer!” the gaddhi insisted, as avid as lust.

Hergrom's impassivity did not flicker. “No.”

“You refuse? Defy me? Crime upon crime! I am the gaddhi of Brathairealm! Refusal is treachery!”

Hergrom gazed his disdain upward and said nothing.

But the gaddhi was prepared for this also. He barked another brackish command. Several of his women shrieked.

Forcing her head to the side, Linden saw a Guard dangling a woman over the edge of the parapet by one ankle.

The Lady Alif, who had tried to help the company earlier.

She squirmed in the air, battering her fear against the Sandwall. But Rant Absolain took no notice of her. Her robe fell about her head, muffling her face and cries. Her silver anklets glinted incongruously in the white sunshine.

“If you do not speak the name,” the gaddhi yelled down at Hergrom, “this Lady will fall to her death! And then if you do not speak the name”-he lashed a glance at Linden-“she whom you title the Chosen will be slain! I repay blood with blood!”

Linden prayed that Hergrom would refuse. He gazed up at her, at Rant Absolain and the Lady, and his face revealed nothing. But then Ceer nodded to him. He turned away. Placing his back to the Sandwall as if he had known all along what would happen, he faced the Great Desert and Sandgorgons Doom, straightened his shoulders in readiness.

Linden wanted to rage, No! But suddenly her strength was gone. Hergrom understood his plight. And still chose to accept it. There was nothing she could do.

Deliberately, he stepped on the gaddhi's emblem, crushing it with his foot. Then across the clenched hush of the crowd and the wide silence of the desert, he articulated one word:

“Nom.”

The gaddhi let out a cry of triumph.

The next moment, the spear was withdrawn from Linden's neck. All the spears were withdrawn. The husta lifted the Lady Alif back to the safety of the Sandwall, set her on her feet. At once, she fled the gathering. Smiling a secretive victory, the Lady Benj watched her go.

Turning from the parapet, Linden found that the Guards had stepped back from her companions.

All of them except Covenant, Vain, and Findail were glaring ire and protest at Kasreyn of the Gyre.

In her concentration on Hergrom, Linden had not felt or heard the Kemper arrive. But he stood now at the edge of the assembly and addressed the company.

“I desire you to observe that I have played no part in this chicane. I must serve my gaddhi as he commands.” His rheumy gaze ignored Rant Absolain. “But I do not participate in such acts.”

Linden nearly hurled herself at him. “What have you done!”

“I have done nothing,” he replied stiffly. “You are witness.” But then his shoulders sagged as if the infant on his back wearied him. “Yet in my way I have earned your blame. What now transpires would not without me.”

Stepping to the parapet, he sketched a gesture toward the distant blackness. He sounded old as he said, “The power of any art depends upon its flaw. Perfection cannot endure in an imperfect world. Thus when I bound the Sandgorgons to their Doom, I was compelled to place a flaw within my theurgy.” He regarded the storm as if he found it draining and lovely. He could not conceal that he admired what he had done.

“The flaw I chose,” he soughed, “is this, that any Sandgorgon will be released if its name is spoken. It will be free while it discovers the one who spoke its name. Then it must slay the speaker and return to its Doom.”

Slay? Linden could not think. Slay?

Slowly, Kasreyn faced the company again. 'Therefore I must share blame. For it was I who wrought Sandgorgons

Doom. And it was I who placed the name your companion has spoken in his mind.'

At that, giddy realizations wheeled through Linden. She saw the Kemper's mendacity mapped before her in white sunlight. She turned as if she were reeling, lurched back to the parapet. Run! she cried. Hergrom! But her voice made no sound.

Because she had chosen to let Kasreyn live. It was intolerable. With a gasp, she opened her throat. “The gates!” Her shout was frail and hoarse, parched into effectlessness by the desert. “Run! We'll help you fight!”

Hergrom and Ceer did not move.

“They will not,” the Kemper said, mimicking sadness. “They know their plight. They will not bring a Sandgorgon among you, nor among the innocents of the Sandhold. And,” he went on, trying to disguise his pride, “there is not time. The Sandgorgons answer their release swiftly. Distance has no meaning to such power. Behold!” His voice sharpened. “Though the Doom lies more than a score of leagues hence, already the answer draws nigh.”

On the other side of the company, the gaddhi began to giggle.

And out from under the virga came a plume of sand among the dunes, arrowing toward the Sandhold. It varied as the terrain varied, raising a long serpentine cloud; but its direction was unmistakable. It was aimed at the spot where Ceer and Hergrom stood against the Sandwall.

Even from that distance, Linden felt the radiations of raw and hostile power.

She pressed her uselessness against the parapet. Her companions stood aching behind her; but she did not turn to look at them, could not. Rant Absolain studied the approaching Sandgorgon and trembled in an ague of eagerness. The sun leaned down on the Sandhold like a reproach.

Then the beast itself appeared. Bleached to an albino whiteness by ages of sun, it was difficult to see against the pale desert. But it ran forward with staggering speed and became clear.

It was larger than the Haruchai awaiting it, but it hardly had size enough to contain so much might. For an instant, Linden was struck by the strangeness of its gait. Its knees were back-bent like a bird's, and its feet were wide pads, giving it the ability to traverse sand with immense celerity and force. Then the Sandgorgon was almost upon Hergrom and Ceer; and she perceived other details.

It had arms, but no hands. Its forearms ended in flat flexible stumps like prehensile battering rams-arms formed to contend with sand, to break stone.

And it had no face. Its head was featureless except for the faint ridges of its skull beneath its hide and two covered slits like gills on either side.

It appeared as violent and absolute as a force of nature. Watching it, Linden was no longer conscious of breathing, Her heart might have stopped. Even Covenant with all his wild magic could not have equalled this feral beast.

Together, Hergrom and Ceer stepped out from the Sandwall, then separated so that the Sandgorgon could not attack them both at once.

The creature shifted its impetus slightly. In a flash of white hide and fury, it charged straight at Hergrom.

At the last instant, he spun out of its way. Unable to stop, the Sandgorgon crashed headlong into the wall.

Linden felt the impact as if the entire Sandhold had shifted. Cracks leaped through the stone; chunks recoiled outward and thudded to the ground.

Simultaneously, Ceer and Hergrom sprang for the creature's back. Striking with all their skill and strength, they hammered at its neck.

It took the blows as if they were handfuls of sand. Spinning sharply, it slashed at them with its arms.