The One Tree

shouted up at Rire Grist, “We require a spear!”

Working by touch, Linden knotted the cloth around Ceer's thigh above the damage, She pulled the tough material as tight as she could. Then she shifted back to his shoulder because that injury was so much less heinous and called for Cail to help her.

Her hands guided his to the points of pressure and stress she required. While she monitored Ceer's collarbone with her fingers, Cail moved and thrust according to her instructions. Together, they manipulated the clavicle into a position where it could heal safely.

She felt the Giants watching her intently, grimly. But she lacked the courage to open her eyes. She had to lock her jaw to keep from weeping in shared pain. Her nerves were being flayed by Ceer's hurt. Yet his need consumed every other consideration. With Cail and then Brinn beside her, she confronted his thigh again.

As her hands explored the wreckage, she feared that the mute screams in his leg would become her screams, reaving her of all resolve. She squeezed her eyelids shut until the pressure made her head throb. But she was professionally familiar with shattered bones. The ruin of Ceer's knee was explicable to her. She knew what needed to be done.

“I'm going to hurt you.” She could not silence the ache of her empathy. “Forgive me.”

Guided by her percipience, she told Brinn and Cail what to do, then helped them do it.

Brinn anchored Ceer's upper leg. Cail grasped Ceer's ankle.

At Linden's word, Cail pulled, opening the knee. Then he twisted it to realign the splinters of bone.

Ceer's breathing gasped through his teeth. Hard pieces of bone ground against each other. Sharp fragments tore new wounds around the joint. Linden felt everything in her own vitals and wanted to shriek. But she did not. She guided Cail's manipulations, pressed recalcitrant splinters back into place, staunched the oozing of blood. Her senses explored the ravaged territory of the wound, gauging what needed to be done next.

Then she had done everything she could. Chips of bone still blocked the joint, and the menisci had been badly torn; but she could not reach those things-or the torn blood vessels, the mutilated nerves-without surgery. Given Ceer's native toughness and a sharp knife, surgery was theoretically possible. But it could not be done here, on the unclean sand. She let Cail release Ceer's ankle and demanded a splint.

One of the Giants placed two smooth shafts of wood into her hands. Involuntarily, she looked at them and saw that they were sections of a spear. And Seadreamer had already unbraided a long piece of rope, thereby obtaining strands with which to bind the wood.

For a moment longer, Linden held herself together. With Cail's help, she applied the splint. Then she removed the tourniquet.

But after that her visceral distress became too strong for suppression. Stiffly, she crawled away from Ceer's pain. Sitting with her back against the Sandwall, she clasped her arms around her knees, hid her face, and tried to rock herself back under control. Her exacerbated nerves wailed at her like lost children; and she did not know how to bear it.

Mistweave's plight had not hurt her like this. But she had not been to blame for it, though the fault for Covenant's condition had been hers then as it was now. And then she had not been so committed to what she was doing, to the quest and her own role in it-to the precise abandonment and exposure which Gibbon-Raver had told her would destroy both her and the world.

Ceer's pain showed her just how much of herself she had lost.

Yet as she bled for him she realised that she did not wish that loss undone. She was still a doctor, still dedicated to the one thing which had preserved her from the inbred darkness of her heritage. And now at least she was not fleeing, not denying. The pain was only pain, after all; and it slowly ebbed from her joints. Better this than paralysis. Or the unresolved hunger that was worse than paralysis.

So when the First knelt before her, placed gentle hands on her shoulders, she met the Giant's gaze. One of the First's hands accidentally brushed the bruises which Cail had left on her arm. Shuddering, she opened herself to the First's concern.

For a moment, her fearsome vulnerability and the First's arduous restraint acknowledged each other. Then the Swordmain stood, drawing Linden to her feet. Gruffly, like a refusal of tears, the First said to the company, “We must go.”

Brinn and Cail nodded. They looked at Seadreamer; and he answered by stooping to Ceer, lifting the injured Haruchai carefully in his arms.

They were all ready to begin the walk to the gate.

Linden stared at them. Thickly, she asked, “What about Hergrom?”

Brinn gazed at her as if he did not understand her question.

“We can't just leave him here.” Hergrom had spent his life to save the company. His body slumped against the wall like a sacrifice to the Great Desert. His blood formed a dark stain around him.

Brinn's flat eyes did not waver. “He failed.”

The force of his absolute gaze stung her. His judgment was too severe; it was inhuman. Because she did not know any other way to repudiate it, she strode over the sand to strike at Brinn's detached countenance with all the weight of her arm.

He caught the blow deftly, gripped her wrist for a moment with the same stone strength which had ground Cail's fingers into her flesh. Then he thrust down her hand, released her. Taking Covenant by the arm, he turned away from her.

Abruptly, Honninscrave bent to pick up the ornament which Rant Absolain had dropped. The black sun of the medallion had been broken in half by Hergrom's foot. Honninscrave's eyes were rimmed with rue and anger as he handed the pieces to the First.

She took them and crumbled them in one fist. The chain she snapped in two places. Then she hurled all the fragments out into the Great Desert, turned and started eastward around the curve of the Sandwall.

Seadreamer and Honninscrave followed her. Brinn and Covenant followed them.

After a moment, Linden, too, thrust herself into motion. Her wrist and upper arm ached. She was beginning to make new promises to herself.

With Cail behind her, and Vain and Findail behind Cail, she joined her companions, leaving Hergrom bereft of the dignity of care or burial by the simple fact that he had proven himself mortal.

The outer face of the wall was long; and the sun beat down as if it rode the immobile tide of the dunes to pound against the company. The sand made every stride strenuous. But Linden had recoiled from Ceer's pain into decision. Hergrom was dead. Ceer needed her. She would have to perform a miracle of surgery to preserve the use of his leg. And Covenant moved a few paces ahead of her, muttering his ritual at blind intervals as if the only thing he could remember was leprosy. She had endured enough.

At last, the Sandwall stopped curving. It became straight as its outer arm reached to join the wall which girdled Bhrathairain and the Harbour. In the middle of that section stood the gate the company sought. It admitted them to the open courtyard, where one of Bhrathairealm's fountains glistened in the sunlight.

There the questers halted. To the right stood the gate which opened on the town; to the left, the entrance toward the Sandhold. The way back to Starfare's Gem seemed unguarded. But Rire Grist and his aide were waiting at the inner gate.

Here, again, there were birds-here, and everywhere around Bhrathairain, but not in the proximity of the Sandhold. Perhaps the donjon had never fed them. Or perhaps they shied from the Kemper's arts.

Unexpectedly, the Appointed spoke. His yellow eyes were hooded, concealing his desires. “Will you not now return to your dromond! This place contains naught but peril for you.”

Linden and the Giants stared at him. His words appeared to strike a chord in the First. She turned to Linden, asking Findail's question mutely.

“Do you think they'll let us leave?” Linden rasped. She trusted the Elohim as much as she did Kasreyn. “Did you see the Guards inside the wall when we came in? Grist is probably just waiting to give the order.” The First's eyes narrowed m acknowledgment; but still her desire to do something, anything, which might relieve her sense of helplessness was plain.

Linden gripped herself more tightly. “There's a lot I need to do for Ceer's leg. If I don't get the bone chips out of that joint, it'll never move again. But that can wait a while. Right now I need hot water and bandages. He's