One Tree (33 page)

Linden could not see what was happening. Foodfendhall blocked the base of the mast from her view. But the red flaring across Brinn’s flat visage as he retreated was the crimson of eel-light, not the orange-and-yellow of flames.

A moment later, his retreat carried him into the grasp of the wind.

He tottered. With all his strength and balance, he resisted; but the hurricane had him, and its savagery was heightened by the way it came boiling past the lee of the roof. He could not save himself from falling.

He lashed out at the eels as he dropped. Simultaneously he pitched himself back toward Seadreamer. His blow struck an attacker away. Its power outlined him against the night like a lightning-burst of pain.

Then a pouch flashed into view, cast from Ceer or Honninscrave to Seadreamer. Fighting the wind, Seadreamer managed to raise his arms, catch the oilskin. Pumping the pouch under his elbow, he squeezed a gush of oil down the mast.

The eel-light turned to fire. Flames immersed the mast, fell in burning gouts of oil and blazing creatures toward the sea.

Linden heard a scream that made no sound. Yowling in frustration, the Raver fled. Its malefic presence burst and vanished, freeing her like an escape from suffocation.

The illumination of eels and oil revealed Brinn. He hung from one of Seadreamer’s ankles, twitching and capering helplessly. But in spite of seizures and wind which tossed him from side to side like a puppet, his grip held.

The oil burned away rapidly. Already the afterdeck had relapsed into the darkness of the storm—night assuaged only by a few faint lanterns. Ceer and Honninscrave were soon able to ascend the mast.

Moored by a rope to Honninscrave, Ceer hung below the mast and swung himself outward until he could reach Brinn. Hugging his kinsman, he let Honninscrave haul the two of them back to relative safety. Then the Master went to aid his brother.

With Covenant supported between them, a link more intimate and binding than birth, Honninscrave and Seadreamer crept down out of the wind.

Linden could hardly believe that they had survived, that the Raver had been defeated. She felt at once faint with relief and exhaustion, fervid to have Covenant near her again, to see if he had been harmed.

He and his rescuers were out of sight beyond the edge of Foodfendhall. She could not bear to wait. But she had to wait. Struggling for self-possession, she went to examine Pitchwife, the First, and Hergrom.

They were recovering well. The two stricken Giants appeared to have suffered no lingering damage. The First was already strong enough to curse the loss of her sword; and Pitchwife was muttering as if he were bemused by the fool-hardiness with which he had charged the eels. Their Giantish immunity to burns had protected them.

Beside them, Hergrom seemed both less and more severely hurt. He had not lost consciousness; his mind had remained clear. But the twitching of his muscles was slow to depart. Apparently his resistance to the eel-blast had prolonged its effect upon him. His limbs were steady for the most part, but the corners of his face continued to wince and tick like an exaggerated display of trepidation.

Perhaps, Linden thought as if his grimacing were an augury, perhaps the Raver had not been defeated. Perhaps it had simply learned enough about the condition of Covenant and the quest and had gone to inform Lord Foul.

Then she turned to meet the return of Ceer and Brinn, Honninscrave and Seadreamer. With the Unbeliever.

They came carefully along the lifelines. Like Hergrom, Brinn suffered from erratic muscular spasms. But they were receding. Seadreamer was sorely weary after his struggles; but his solid form showed no other hurt.

Honninscrave carried Covenant. At the sight, Linden’s eyes filled with tears. She had never been able to control the way her orbs misted and ran at any provocation; and now she did not try. Covenant was unchanged—as empty of mind or will as an abandoned crypt. But he was safe. Safe. When the Master set him down, she went to him at once. Though she was unacquainted with such gestures, perhaps had no right to them, she put her arms around him and did not care who saw the fervor of her embrace.

But the night was long and cold, and the storm still raved like all fury incarnate. Starfare’s Gem skidded in a mad rush along the seas, tenuously poised between life and death. There was nothing
anybody could do except clinch survival and hope. In the bone-deep shivers which wracked her, the weariness which enervated her limbs so thoroughly that even
diamondraught
scarcely palliated it, Linden was surprised to find that she was as capable of hope as the Giants.

Their spirit seemed to express its essence in Honninscrave, who bore the command of the ship as if Starfare’s Gem itself were indomitable. At Shipsheartthew, Galewrath no longer appeared too frozen by duty to meet the strain. Rather, her great arms gripped the spokes as if she were more indefeasible than the very storm. Brinn and Hergrom had recovered their characteristic imperviousness. The
dromond
lived. Hope was possible.

Yet when dawn came at last, Linden had fallen so far into bare knotted endurance that the sun took her by surprise. Stupefied by exhaustion, she did not know which astonished her more—the simple return of day, unlooked-for after the interminable battery of that night, or the fact that the sky was free of clouds.

She could hardly credit her eyes. Covered by the vessel’s lee, she had not noticed that the rain had stopped sometime during the night. Now the heavens macerated from purple to blue as the sun appeared almost directly behind the Giantship’s stern. The clouds were gone as if they had been worn away by the incessant tearing of the wind. And yet the gale continued to blow, unabated and unappeased.

Blinking weakly, she scanned her companions. They looked unnaturally distinct in the clear air, like men and women who had been whetted by stress to a keener edge, a sharper existence. Their apparel was rimed and crusted with salt: it marked their faces like the desiccated masks of their mortality, drifted in powder from the opening and closing of hands, the bending of arms, the shifting of positions. Yet they moved. They spoke hoarsely to each other, flexed the cramps out of their muscles, cast raw and gauging glances at the sea. They were alive.

Linden took an inventory of the survivors to assure herself that no one had been lost. The stubborn thudding of the pumps gave her an estimate of the Giants who were below; and that number completed her count. Swallowing at the bitter salt in her throat, she asked Call if anyone had seen Vain or Findail.

He replied that Hergrom had gone forward some time ago to see if the Demondim-spawn and the
Elohim
were still safe. He had found them as she had last seen them: Findail riding the prow like a figurehead; Vain standing with his face to the deep as if he could read the secrets of the Earth in that dark rush.

Linden nodded. She had not expected anything else. Vain and Findail deserved each other: they were both as secretive and unpredictable as sea, as unreachable as stone. When Cail offered her a bowl of
diamondraught
, she took a sparing sip, then passed it to the Giant nearest her. Squinting against the unfamiliar light, she turned to study the flat seethe of the ocean.

But the sea was no longer flat. Faint undulations ran along the wind. She felt no lessening of the gale; but it must have declined somewhat. Its force no longer completely effaced the waves.

With a sting of apprehension, she snatched her gaze to the waterline below her.

That line dipped and rose slightly. And every rise took hold of another slight fraction of the deck as the waves lifted more water into the Giantship. The creaking of the masts had become louder. The pumps labored to a febrile pitch.

By slow degrees, Starfare’s Gem was falling into its last crisis.

Linden searched the deck for Honninscrave, shouted his name. But when he turned to answer her hail, she stopped. His eyes were dark with recognition and grief.

“I have seen, Chosen.” His voice carried a note of bereavement. “We are fortunate in this light. Had gloom still shrouded us—” He trailed into a sad silence.

“Honninscrave.” The First spoke sharply, as though his rue angered her. “It must be done.”

“Aye,” he echoed in a wan tone. “It must be done.”

She did not relent. “It must be done now.”

“Aye,” he sighed again. “Now.” Misery twisted his visage. But a moment later he recaptured his strength of decision, and his back straightened. “Since it must be done, I will do it.”

Abruptly he indicated four of his crewmembers, beckoned for them to follow him, and turned aft. Over his shoulder, he said, “Sevinhand I will send to this command.”

The First called after him like an acknowledgment or apology, “Which will you select?”

Without turning, he replied with the Giantish name for the midmast, uttering the word grimly, like the appellation of a lost love. “Starfare’s Gem must not be unbalanced to fore or aft.”

With his four Giants behind him, he went below.

Linden groped her way in trepidation to the First’s side. “What’s he going to do?”

The First swung a gaze as hard as a slap on Linden. “Chosen,” she said dourly, “you have done much—and will do more. Let this matter rest with the Master.”

Linden winced at the rebuff, started to retort. But then her hearing clarified, and she caught herself. The First’s tone had been one of grief and frustration, not affront. She shared Honninscrave’s emotions. And she was helpless. The
dromond
’s survival was in his hands, not hers. In addition, the loss of her sword seemed to take some vital confidence out of her, making her bitter with uncertainty.

Linden understood. But she had no comfort to offer. Returning to Covenant, she took hold of his arm as if even that one-sided contact were a reassurance and focused her attention on the waterline.

The faint dip and rise of the waves had increased, multiplying by increments the sea’s hold on the Giantship. She was sure now that the angle of the deck had become steeper. The tips of the spars hung fatally close to the undulating water. Her senses throbbed to the strain of the ship’s balance. She perceived as vividly as vision that if those tips touched the sea Starfare’s Gem would be dragged down.

Moments later, Sevinhand came hurrying from the underdecks. His lean old face was taut with determination. Though he had spent the whole night and most of the previous day commanding the pumps, sweating at them himself, he moved as if Starfare’s Gem’s need transcended everything which might have made him weak. As he went forward, he called several Giants after him. When they responded, he led them into Foodfendhall and out of sight.

Linden dug her fingers into Covenant’s arm and fought to keep from trembling. Every dip of the waves consumed more of the Giantship, drew it another fraction farther onto its side.

Then Honninscrave’s bellow of inquiry echoed from the underdecks. It seemed to come from the vicinity of the holds under the midmast.

In a raw shout, Sevinhand answered that he was ready.

At once, a fierce pounding vibrated through the stone. It dwarfed the exertion of the pumps, pierced the long howl of the wind. For a mad
instant, Linden thought that Honninscrave and his crew must be attacking the underdecks with sledgehammers, trying to wreck the
dromond
from within, as if in that way they could make it valueless to the storm, not worth sinking. But the Giants around her tensed expectantly; and the First barked, “Hold ready! We must be prepared to labor for our lives!”

The intensity of the pounding—fury desperate as bereavement—led Linden’s attention to the midmast. The stone had begun to scream like a tortured man. The yards trembled at every blow. Then she understood. Honninscrave was attacking the butt of the mast. He wanted to break it free, drop it overboard, in order to shift the balance of the
dromond
. Every blow strove to break the moorings which held the mast.

Linden bruised Covenant’s arm with her apprehension. The Master could not succeed. He did not have enough time. Under her, the Giantship leaned palpably toward its death. That fall was only heartbeats away.

But Honninscrave and his Giants struck and struck as if they were repudiating an unbearable doom. Another shriek sprang from the stone—a cry of protest louder than the gale.

With a hideous screech of rent and splintered granite, the mast started to topple.

It sounded like the death throes of a mountain as it rove its moorings. Below it, the roof of the housing crumpled. The falling mast crashed through the side of the Giantship. Shatterings staggered the
dromond
to its keel, sent massive tremors kicking through the vessel from prow to stern. Shared agony yammered in Linden’s bones. She thought that she was screaming, but could not hear herself.

Then the cacophony of breakage dropped below the level of the wind. The mast struck the sea like a pantomime of ruin, and the splash wet all the decks and the watchers soundlessly, as if they were deaf with sorrow.

From the shattered depths of the
dromond
, Honninscrave’s outcry rose over the water that poured thunderously through the breach left by the mast.

And like his cry Starfare’s Gem lifted.

The immense weight of the keel pulled against the inrushing sea. Slowly, ponderously, the Giantship began to right itself.

Even then, it might have died. It had shipped far more water than the pumps could handle; and the gap in its side gaped like an open wound, admitting more water at every moment.

But Sevinhand and Galewrath were ready. The Anchormaster instantly sent his Giants up the foremast to unfurl the lowest sail. And as the wind clawed at the canvas, tried to tear it away or use it to thrust the vessel down again, Galewrath spun Shipsheartthew, digging the rudder into the furious sea.

There Starfare’s Gem was saved. That one sail and the rudder were enough: they turned the
dromond
’s stern to the wind. Running before the blast, the Giantship was able to stand upright, lifting its breached side out of the water.