The One Tree

At that stark statement, his breath hissed through his teeth like a flinch of pain.

Brinn nodded. If he had taken any hurt from Linden's accusation, he did not show it.

For a moment, Covenant grasped after comprehension. Then he muttered, “All right. That's enough.”

The Haruchai did not retreat. “Ur-Lord, there must be retribution.”

“No,” Covenant responded as if he had heard a different reply. “She's a doctor. She saves lives. Do you think she isn't already suffering?”

“I know nothing of that,” retorted Brinn. “I know only that she attempted Ceer's life.”

Without warning, Covenant broke into a shout. “I don't care!” He spat vehemence at Brinn as if it were being physically torn out of him. “She saved me! She saved all of us! Do you think that was easy? I'm not going to turn my back on her, just because she did something I don't understand!”

“Ur-Lord-” Brinn began.

“No!” Covenant's passion carried so many implications of power that it shocked the deck under Linden's feet. “You've gone too far already!” His chest heaved with the effort he made to control himself. 'In Andelain-with the Dead-Elena talked about her. She said, 'Care for her, beloved, so that in the end she may heal us all.' Elena“ he insisted. ”The High Lord. She loved me, and it killed her. But never mind that. I won't have her treated this way.“ His voice shredded under the strain of self-containment. ”Maybe you don't trust her.“ His half-fist jabbed possibilities of fire around him. ”Maybe you don't trust me.“ He could not keep himself from yelling, ”But you are by God going to leave her alone!'

Brinn did not reply. His fiat eyes blinked as if he were questioning Covenant's sanity.

Instantly, light on the verge of flame licked from every line of the Unbeliever's frame. The marks on his forearm gleamed like fangs. His shout was a concussion of force which staggered the atmosphere.

“Do you hear me?”

Brinn and Cail retreated a step as if Covenant's might awed them. Then, together, they bowed to him as scores of the Haruchai had bowed when he had returned from Glimmermere with Loric's krill and their freedom in his hands. “Ur-Lord,” Brinn said in recognition. “We hear you.”

Panting through his teeth, Covenant wrestled down the fire.

The next moment, Findail appeared at his side. The Appointed's mien was lined with anxiety and exasperation; and he spoke as if he had been trying to get Covenant's attention for some time.

“Ring-wielder, they hear you. All who inhabit the Earth hear you. You alone have no ears. Have I not said and said that you must not raise this wild magic? You are a peril to all you deem dear.”

Covenant swung on the Elohim, With the index finger of his half-hand, he stabbed at Findail as if to mark the spot where he meant to strike.

“If you're not going to answer questions,” he snarled, “don't talk to me at all. If you people had any goddamn scruples, none of this would've happened.”

For a moment, Findail met Covenant's ire with his yellow gaze. Then, softly, he asked, “Did we not preserve your soul?”

He did not wait for a reply. Turning with the dignity of old pain, he went back to his chosen station in the prow.

At once, Covenant faced Linden again. The pressure in him burned as hotly as ever; and it forced her to see him more clearly. It had nothing to do with Findail-or with the Haruchai. In surprise, she perceived now that he had never intended to permit any retribution against her. He was raw with grief over Ceer and Hergrom-nearly mad with venom and power-appalled by what she had done. But he had never considered the idea of punishment.

He gave her no time to think. “Come with me.” His command was as absolute as the Haruchai. Pivoting sharply, he stalked to the new junction of the fore-and afterdecks. He seemed to choose that place so that he would not be overheard. Or so that he would not be a hazard to the masts and sails.

Pitchwife's misshapen features expressed relief and apprehension on different parts of his face. The First raised a hand to the sweat of distress on her forehead, and her gaze avoided Linden as if to eschew comment on anything the Giantfriend did or wanted. Linden feared to follow him. She knew instinctively that this was her last chance to refuse-her last chance to preserve the denials on which she had founded her life. Yet his stress reached out to her across the gray unsunlit expanse of the afterdeck. Stiffly, abrading her thighs at every step, she went toward him.

For a moment, he did not look at her. He kept his back to her as if he could not bear the sight of what she had become. But then his shoulders bunched, bringing his hands together in a knot like the grasp of a strangler, and he turned to confront her. His voice spattered acid as he said, “Now you're going to tell me why you did it.”

She did not want to answer. The answer was in her. It lay at the root of her black mood, felt like the excruciation which clawed the nerves of her elbow. But it dismayed her completely. She had never admitted that crime to anyone, never given anyone else the right to judge her. What he already knew about her was bad enough. If she could have used her right hand, she would have covered her face to block the harsh penetration and augury of his gaze. In an effort to fend him off, she gritted severely, “I'm a doctor. I don't like watching people die. If I can't save them-”

“No.” Threats of wild magic thickened his tone. “Don't give me any cheap rationalizations. This is too important.”

She did not want to answer. But she did. All the issues and needs of the past night came together in his question and demanded to be met. Ceer's blood violated her pants like the external articulation of other stains, other deaths. Her hands had been scarred with blood for so long now that the taint had sunk into her soul. Her father had marked her for death. And she had proved him right.

At first, the words came slowly. But they gathered force like a possession. Soon their hold over her was complete. They rose up in her one after another until they became gasping. She needed to utter them. And all the time Covenant watched her with nausea on his visage as if everything he had ever felt for her were slowly sickening within him.

“It was the silence,” she began-words like the faint, almost pointless hammerstrokes which could eventually break granite. “The distance.” The Elohim had driven it into him like a wedge, breaking the necessary linkage of sensation and consciousness, action and import. “It was in me. I knew what I was doing. I knew what was happening around me. But I didn't seem to have any choice. I didn't know how or even why I was still breathing.”

She avoided his gaze. The previous night came back to her, darkening the day so that she stood lightless and alone in the wasteland she had made of her life.

“We were trying to escape from the Sandhold, and I was trying to climb out of the silence. I had to start right at the bottom. I had to remember what it was like-living in that old house with the attic, the fields and sunshine, and my parents already looking for a way to die. Then my father cut his wrists. After that, there didn't seem to be any distinction between what we were doing and what I remembered. Being on the Sandwall was exactly the same thing as being with my father.”

And her mother's gall had soured the very blood in her veins. In losing her husband, being so selfishly abandoned by him, the older woman had apparently lost her capacity for endurance. She had been forced by her husband's financial wreckage-and by Linden's hospital bills-to sell her house; and that had affected her like a fundamental defeat. She had not abrogated her fervour for her church. Rather, she had transferred much of her dependency there. Though her welfare checks might have been sufficient, she had wheedled an apartment from one member of the church, imposed on others for housework jobs which she performed with tremendous self-pity. The services and prayer-meetings and socials she used as opportunities to demand every conceivable solace and support. But her bitterness had already become unassuageable.

By a process almost as miraculous as resurrection, she had transformed her husband into a gentle saint driven to his death by the cruel and inexplicable burden of a daughter who demanded love but did not give it. This allowed her to portray herself as a saint as well, and to perceive as virtue the emotional umbrage she levied against her child. And still it was not enough. Nothing was enough. Virtually every penny she received, she spent