One Tree (15 page)

Linden had no answer for him and did not like to see him in such doubt. But she was secretly pleased that he was healthy enough to wrestle with his questions. And she needed his reassurance that she might be able to make choices that mattered.

At another time, he turned her attention to Vain. The Demondim-spawn stood on the afterdeck near Foodfendhall exactly as he had since the moment when Covenant had fallen there. His black arms hung slightly crooked at his sides as if they had been arrested in the act of taking on life; and the midnight of his eyes gazed emptily before him like an assertion that everything which took place on the Giantship was evanescent and nugatory.

“Why—?” Covenant mused slowly. “Why do you suppose he wasn’t hurt by that bloody
Grim?
It just rolled off him. But the Riders were able to burn him with their
rukhs
. He actually obeyed them when they forced him into the hold.”

Linden shrugged. Vain was an enigma. The way he had reacted toward her—first bowing to her outside Revelstone, then carrying her away from her companions when she was helpless with Sunbane-fever—disturbed her. “Maybe the
Grim
wasn’t directed at him personally,” she offered. “Maybe the”—she groped for the name—“the ur-viles? Maybe they could make him immune to anything that happened around him—like the Sunbane, or the
Grim
—but not to something aimed
at
him.” Covenant listened intently, so she went on guessing. “Maybe they didn’t want to give him the power to actually defend himself. If he could do that, would you trust him?”

“I don’t trust him anyway,” muttered Covenant. “He was going to let Stonemight Woodhelven kill me. Not to mention those Sunbane-victims
around During Stonedown. And he butchered—” His hands fisted as he remembered the blood Vain had shed.

“Then maybe,” she said with a dull twist of apprehension, “Gibbon knows more about him than you do.”

But the only time his questions drew a wince from her was when he raised the subject of Kevin’s Watch. Why, he asked, had Lord Foul not spoken to her when they had first appeared in the Land? The Despiser had given him a vitriolic message of doom for himself and the Land. She still remembered that pronouncement exactly as Covenant had relayed it to her:
There is despair laid up for you here beyond anything your petty mortal heart can bear
. But Lord Foul had said nothing to her. On Kevin’s Watch, he had let her pass untouched.

“He didn’t need to,” she replied bitterly. “He already knew everything he needed about me.” Gibbon-Raver had revealed the precision of the Despiser’s knowledge.

He regarded her with a troubled aspect; and she saw that he had already considered that possibility. “Maybe not,” he returned in denial. “Maybe he didn’t talk to you because he hadn’t planned for you to be there. Maybe when you tried to rescue me you took him by surprise and just got swept along. If that’s true, then you weren’t part of his original plan. And everything Gibbon said to you is a lie. A way to defuse the danger you represent. Make you think you don’t have a chance. When the truth is that you’re the biggest threat to him there is.”

“How?” she demanded. His interpretation did not comfort her. She would never be able to forget the implications of Gibbon’s touch. “I don’t have any
power
.”

He grimaced crookedly. “You’ve got the health-sense. Maybe you can keep me alive.”

Alive, she rasped to herself. She had expressed the same idea to Pitchwife, and it had not eased her. But how else could she hope to alter the course of her life? She had an acute memory of the venom in Covenant, the accumulating extremity of his need. Perhaps by dedicating herself to that one task—a responsibility fit for a doctor—she would be able to appease her hunger and hold the darkness back.

The Roveheartswind blew as steadily as stone for five days. Since the sails required so little care, the crew busied itself with the manifold other tasks of the ship: cleaning away every hint of encrusted salt; replacing worn ratlines and gear; oiling unused cable and canvas to preserve them against the weather. These smaller chores the Giants performed with the same abiding enthusiasm that they gave to the more strenuous work of the
dromond
. Yet Honninscrave watched them and the ship, scanned the Sea, consulted his astrolabe, studied his parchment charts as if he expected danger at any moment. Or, Linden thought when she looked at him closely, as if he needed to keep himself busy.

She rarely saw him leave the wheeldeck, though surely neither Sevinhand nor Galewrath would have warded Starfare’s Gem less vigilantly than he did. At times when his gaze passed, unseeing, through her, she read a clinch of hope or dread in his cavernous orbs. It left her with the impression that he was caught up in an idea which had not yet occurred to anyone else.

For five days, the Roveheartswind blew; and as the fifth day relaxed into late afternoon, a shout from Horizonscan snatched every eye on deck toward the east: “Bareisle!” And there off the port bow stood the black burned rock of the island.

From a distance, it appeared to be no more than a dark eyot amid the sun-burnished blue of the Sea. But as the wind swept Starfare’s Gem forward on the south, Bareisle’s true size became manifest. With its towering igneous peaks and sheer valleys, its barren stone scarcely fringed by the stubborn clutch of vegetation, the island looked like a tremendous cairn or marker, erected toward the sky in warning. Birds cycled above it as if it were a dead thing. As she studied the craggy rock, Linden felt a quiver of foreboding.

At the same time, Honninscrave lifted his voice over the Giantship. “Hear me!” he cried—a shout of yearning and trepidation, as lorn and resonant as the wind. “Here we pass from the safe Sea into the demesne and ken of the
Elohim
. Be warned! They are lovely and perilous, and none can foretell them. If they so desire, the very Sea will rise against us.” Then he barked his commands, turning Starfare’s Gem so that it passed around Bareisle with its stern braced on the wind, running now straight into the northeast.

Linden’s foreboding tightened. The
Elohim
, she murmured. What kind of people marked the verge of their territory with so much black stone? As her view of the island changed from south to east, Bareisle came between her and the sunset and was silhouetted in red glory. Then the rock appeared to take on life, so that it looked like the stark straining fist of a drowner, upraised against the fatal Sea. But as the sun slipped past the horizon, Bareisle was lost in dusk.

That night, the
Questsimoon
faded into a succession of crosswinds which kept each watch in turn almost constantly aloft, fighting the sails from tack to tack. But the next day the breezes clarified, allowing Starfare’s Gem to make steady progress. And the following dawn, when Linden hurried from her cabin to learn why the
dromond
was riding at rest, she found that the Giants had dropped anchor off a jutting coast of mountains.

The ship stood with its prow aimed squarely toward a channel which lay like a fiord between rugged peaks. Bifurcated only by the inlet, these mountains spread away to the north and south as far as Linden could see, forming an impassable coast. In the distance on both sides, the littoral curved as if it were receding from the Sea. As a result, the cliffs directly facing the
dromond
appeared to be out-thrust like jaws to grab whatever approached their gullet.

The dawn was crisp; behind the salt breeze and the sunlight glittering along the channel, the air tasted like late fall. But the mountains looked too cold for autumn. Their dour cols and tors were cloaked with evergreens which seemed to take a gray hue from the granite around them, as if this land passed without transition and almost without change from summer into winter. Yet only the highest peaks cast any hints of snow.

The Giants had begun to gather near the wheeldeck. Linden went to join them. Honninscrave’s words, Lovely and perilous, were still with her. And she had heard other hints of strangeness concerning the
Elohim
.

Covenant and Brinn, Pitchwife and the First had preceded her, and Seadreamer followed her up to the wheeldeck almost on Cail’s heels. On the afterdeck, Sevinhand and the Storesmaster stood with the other Giants and
Haruchai
, all waiting to hear what would be said. Only Vain seemed oblivious to the imminence in the air. He remained motionless near Foodfendhall, with his back to the coast as if it meant nothing to him.

Linden expected the First to speak, but it was Honninscrave who addressed the gathering. “My friends,” he said with a wide gesture, “behold the land of the
Elohim
. Before us lies our path. This inlet is
named the
Raw
. It arises from the River Callowwail, and the River Callowwail in turn arises from the place which the
Elohim
name their
clachan
—from the spring and fountainhead of
Elemesnedene
itself. These mountains are the Rawedge Rim, warding
Elemesnedene
from intrusion. Thus are the
Elohim
preserved in their peace, for no way lies inward except the way of the
Raw
. And from the
Raw
no being or vessel returns without the goodwill of those who hold the
Raw
and the Callowwail and Woodenwold in their mastery.

“I have spoken of the
Elohim
. They are gay and subtle, warm and cunning. If they are at all limited in lore or power, that limit is unknown. None who have emerged from the Raw have gained such knowledge. And of those who have not emerged, no tale remains. They have passed out of life, leaving no trace.”

Honninscrave paused. Into the silence, Covenant protested, “That’s not the way Foamfollower talked about them.” His tone was sharp with memory. “He called them ‘the sylvan faery
Elohim
. A laughing people.’ Before the Unhomed got to Seareach, a hundred of them decided to stay and live with the
Elohim
. How perilous can they be? Or have they changed too—?” His voice trailed off into uncertainty.

The Master faced Covenant squarely. “The
Elohim
are what they are. They do not alter. And Saltheart Foamfollower bespoke them truly.

“Those of our people whom you have named the Unhomed were known to us as the Lost. In their proud ships they ventured the Earth and did not return. In the generations which followed, search was made for them. The Lost we did not find, but signs of their sojourn were found. Among the
Bhrathair
still lived a handful of our people, descendants of those few Giants who remained to give aid against the Sandgorgons of the Great Desert. And among the
Elohim
were found tales of those five score Lost who chose to take their rest in
Elemesnedene
.

“But Saltheart Foamfollower spoke as one descended from those who emerged from the
Raw
, permitted by the goodwill of the
Elohim
. What of the five score who remained? Covenant Giantfriend, they were more surely
lost
than any of the Unhomed, for they were lost to themselves. Twice a hundred years later, naught remained of them but their tale in the mouths of the
Elohim
. In such a span, five score Giants would not have died of age—yet these were gone. And behind them they left no children. None, though our people love children and the making of children as dearly as life.

“No.” The Master straightened his shoulders, confronted the channel of the
Raw
. “I have said that the
Elohim
are perilous, I have not said that they desire hurt to any life, or to the Earth. But in their own tales they are portrayed as the bastion of the last truth, and that truth they preserve in ways which baffle all who behold them. On Starfare’s Gem, I alone have once entered the
Raw
and emerged. As a youth on another
dromond
, I came to this place with my companions. We returned scatheless, having won no boon from the
Elohim
by all our gifts and bargaining but the benison of their goodwill. I speak from knowledge.

“I do not anticipate harm. In the name of the white ring—of the Earth-Sight”—he glanced intently at Seadreamer, betraying a glimpse of the pressure which had been driving him—“and of our need for the One Tree—I trust we will be well received. But such surpassing power is ever perilous. And this power is both squandered and withheld for purposes which the
Elohim
do not deign to reveal. They are occult beyond the grasp of any mortal.

“From time to time, their power is given in gift. Such is the gift of tongues, won for our people in a time many and many generations
past, yet still unwaning and untainted. And such a gift we now seek. But the
Elohim
grant no gifts unpurchased. Even their goodwill must be won in barter—and in this bartering we are blind, for the quality which gives a thing or a tale value in their sight is concealed. For precious stone and metal they have no need. Of knowledge they have no dearth. Many tales hold scant interest for them. Yet it was with a tale that the gift of tongues was won—the tale, much loved by Giants, of Bahgoon the Unbearable and Thelma Twofist who tamed him. And the goodwill of the
Elohim
for me and my companions was won by the teaching of a simple knot—a thing so common among us that we scarcely thought to offer it, yet it was deemed of worth to the
Elohim
.

“Therefore we emerged from
Elemesnedene
in wonder and bafflement. And in conviction of peril, for a people of power who find such delight in a knot for which they have no use are surely perilous. If we give them offense, the
Raw
will never yield up our bones.”

As he spoke, tension mounted in Linden. Some of it grew from Covenant; his aggravated aura was palpable to her. Perplexity and fear emphasized the gauntness of his eyes, compressed the strictness which lined his face. He had based his urgent hope on what Foamfollower had told him about the
Elohim
. Now he was asking himself how he could possibly barter with them for the knowledge he needed. What did he have that they might want?