The One Tree

For an instant, Covenant wanted to challenge Findail. His palms itched with power; flames skirled up and down his arms. But he held himself back. He might soon have a better chance to obtain the answers he wanted. Swinging away from the Elohim, he climbed the stairs as swiftly as the fire in his legs.

The stairs were long; and when they ended, they left him in the maze of halls and passages at the rear of the First Circinate. The place seemed empty. Apparently, the forces of the Sandhold had already been summoned elsewhere. He did not know which way to go. But Brinn was certain. He took the lead; and Covenant followed him at a run.

The breaking of rocks had stopped. The stones no longer trembled. But from a distance came the sound of sirens-raw and prolonged cries like the screaming of gargoyles. They wailed as if they were mustering all Bhrathairealm for war.

Chewing the knowledge that no flight from the Sandhold or Bhrathairain Harbour could hope to succeed while Kasreyn of the Gyre lived, Covenant increased his pace.

Sooner than he expected, he left the complex backways and poured like a flow of silver into the immense forecourt of the First Circinate, between the broad stairways which matched each other upward.

The forecourt was heavily guarded by hustin and soldiers.

A shout sprang at the ceiling. The forces of the Sandhold were ranked near the gates to fend off an attempted escape. They looked vast and dim, for night had fallen and the forecourt was lit only by torches held among the Guards. At the shout, assailants surged forward.

Brinn ignored them. He sped lightly to the nearest stairs, started upward. Covenant followed on the strength of wild magic. Findail moved as if the air about him were his wings.

Answering the shout, a cadre of hustin came clattering from the Second Circinate. Scores of Guards must have been waiting there, intending to catch the company in a pincer. Shadows flickered like disconcertion across their bestial faces as they saw the three men rising to meet them instead of fleeing.

Brinn tripped one of them, staggered a second, wrested the spear from a third. Then Covenant swept all the hustin from the stair with a sheet of flame and raced on.

Pausing only to hurl that spear at the pursuit, Brinn dashed back into the lead.

The Second Circinate was darker than the First. The squadrons poised there did not betray their presence with torches. But Covenant's power shone like a cynosure, exposing the danger. At every step, he seemed to ascend toward exaltation. Venom and fire conveyed him forward as if he were no longer making his own choices. Since the hustin and soldiers were too many for Brinn to attack effectively, Covenant called the Haruchai to his side, then raised a conflagration around the two of them and used it like the armour of a battlewain as he continued on his way. His blaze scored a trail across the floor. The attackers could not reach him through it. Spears were thrown at him, but wild magic struck them into splinters.

Outside the Sandhold, the sirens mounted in pitch, began to pulse like the ululation of the damned. Covenant paid no attention to them. Defended by fire, he moved to the next stairs and went up into the Tier of Riches.

The lights of that place had been extinguished; but it was empty of foes. Perhaps the Kemper had not expected his enemies to gain this level; or perhaps he did not wish to risk damage to centuries of accumulated treasure. At the top of the stairs, Covenant paused, gathered his armour of flame into one hot mass and hurled it downward to slow the pursuit. Then again he ran after Brinn, dodging through the galleries with his rage at Kasreyn fixed squarely before him.

Up the wide rich stairway from the Tier they spiralled like a gyre and burst into The Majesty.

Here the lights were undimmed. Huge cruses and vivid candelabra still focused their rumination toward the Auspice as if the dominion of the gaddhi's seat were not a lie. But all the Guards had been withdrawn to serve Kasreyn elsewhere. Nothing interfered with Covenant's advance as he swept forward, borne along by wild magic and sirens. With Findail trailing behind them like an expostulation, Brinn and the Unbeliever moved straight to the hidden door which gave access to Kemper's Pitch, sprang upward toward Kasreyn's private demesne.

Covenant mounted like a blaze into a night sky. The climb was long, should have been arduous; but wild magic inured him to exertion. He breathed air like fire and did not weaken. The sirens cast glaring echoes about his head; and behind that sound he heard hustin pounding heavily after them as rapidly as the constriction of the stairway permitted. But he was condor-swift and puissant, outrunning any pursuit. In passion like the leading edge of an apotheosis, he felt he could have entered Sandgorgons Doom itself and been untouched.

Yet under the wild magic and the exultation, his mind remained clear. Kasreyn was a mighty thaumaturge. He had reigned over this region of the Earth for centuries. And if Covenant did not contrive a defence against the pursuing Guards, he would be forced to slay them all. That prospect struck cold through him. When this transport ended, how would he bear the weight of so much bloodshed?

As he entered the large chamber where the Lady Alif had attempted his seduction, he fought down his power, reduced it to a guttering suggestion around his ring. The effort made his head spin like vertigo; but he ground his teeth until the pressure was contained. It laboured in him; he feared he would not be able to hold it for long. Harshly, he called Brinn back from the ironwork ascent to Kasreyn's lucubrium.

The Haruchai looked at him with an inflection of surprise. In response, Covenant jerked a nod upward. “That's my job.” His voice was stretched taut by restraint. Already, the lid he had placed over the pressure seemed to bulge and crack. “You can't help me there. I won't risk you. And I need you here.” The sounds of pursuit rose clearly through the open doorway. “Keep those Guards off my back.”

Brinn measured Covenant with a stare, then nodded. The stairway was narrow. Alone, he might be able to hold this chamber against any number of hustin. The task appeared to please him, as if it were condign work for an Haruchai. He gave the ur-Lord a formal bow. Covenant moved toward the stairs.

Still Findail remained at his back. The Elohim was speaking again, adjuring Covenant to withhold. Covenant did not listen to the words; but he used Findail's voice to help him steady himself. In his own fashion, Findail represented a deeper danger than Kasreyn of the Gyre. And Covenant had conceived a way to confront the two of them together.

If he could retain control long enough.

Without the wild magic, he had to ascend on the ordinary strength of his legs. The desert night was chilly; but sweat stood on his brow as if it were being squeezed from his skull by the wailing of the sirens. His restraint affected him like fear. His heart thudded, breathing rasped, as he climbed the final stairs and came face to face with the Kemper.

Kasreyn stood near one wall of the lucubrium, behind a long table. The table held several urns, flasks, retorts, as well as a large iron bowl which steamed faintly. He was in the process of preparing his arts.

A few steps to one side was the chair in which he had once put Covenant to the question. But the chair's apparatus had been altered. Now golden circles like enlarged versions of his ocular sprouted from it in all directions on thin stalks like wands.

Covenant braced himself, expecting an immediate attack-Fire heaved at the leash of his will. But the Kemper cast a rheumy glance at him, a look of old disdain, then returned his attention to his bowl. His son slept like a dead thing in the harness on his back. “So you have mastered a Sandgorgon.”

His voice rustled like the folds of his robe. For centuries, he had demonstrated that nothing could harm him. Honninscrave's blow had left no mark. “That is a mighty deed. It is said among the Bhrathair that any man who slays a Sandgorgon will live forever.”

Covenant struggled for control. Venom and power raged to be released. He felt that he was suffocating on his own restraint. The blood in his veins was afire with reasons for this man's death. But standing there now, facing the gaddhi's Kemper, he found he could not self-consciously choose to kill. No reasons were enough. He had already killed too many people.

He answered hoarsely, like a rasp of bereavement, “I didn't.”

That caught Kasreyn's attention. “Not?” Suddenly, he was angry. “Are you mad?