One Tree (8 page)

“No.” Linden’s voice husked roughly out of her emptiness. “He still has that venom. He’s dying in there.”

“Then”—Pitchwife’s tone brought her back to his probing—“we must find the means to unweave this power, so that he may be succored.”

At that, her stomach turned over in protest. She wanted to cry out, Weren’t you watching? I tried to
possess
him. This is my doing. But her ire was useless; and the Giant’s empathy sloughed it away. Her remaining bitterness compressed itself into one word: “How?”

“Ah, Chosen.” Pitchwife smiled like a shrug. “That you must tell me.”

She flinched, closed her eyes. Unconsciously her hands covered her face. Had she not done enough harm? Did he want her to actually hold the knife that killed Covenant?

But Pitchwife did not relent. “We lack your sight,” he repeated in quiet suasion. “You must guide us. Think on hope. Clearly we cannot pierce this caul. Very well. Then we must answer it with understanding. What manner of power is it? What has transpired in his mind, that he is driven to such defense? What need is occulted within him? Chosen.” Again his hands tightened, half lifting her to her feet. “How may we appeal to him, so that he will permit our aid?”

“Appeal—?” The suggestion drew a gasp of bile from her. Her arms dropped, uncovering her indignation. “He’s dying! He’s deaf and blind with venom and delirium! Do you think I can just go over there and ask him to please stop defending himself?”

Pitchwife cocked an eyebrow at her anger; but he did not flinch. A smile softened his features. “It is good,” he said through his twisted grin. “If you are capable of wrath, then you are also capable of hope.”

She started to spit at him,
Hope
? But he overrode her firmly. “Very well. You see no means of appeal. But there are other questions to which you might reply, if you chose.”

“What do you want from me?” she burned into his face. “Do you want me to convince you that it’s my fault? Well, it is. He must’ve thought I was a Raver or something. He was delirious—in terrible pain. The last thing he knew before he relapsed, he was being attacked by those rats. How was he supposed to know I was trying to help him? He didn’t even know it was me. Until too late.

“It’s like—” She fumbled momentarily for a description. “Like hysterical paralysis. He’s so afraid of his ring—and so afraid Foul’s going to get it. And he’s a leper. His numbness makes him think he can’t control the power. He hasn’t got the nerves to control it. Even without the venom, he’s afraid all the time. He never knows when he’s going to kill somebody else.”

Words poured from her. In the back of her mind, she relived what she had learned before Covenant hurled her away. As she spoke, those inchoate images took shape for her.

“And he knew what was happening to him. He’s had relapses before. When the venom came over him, probably the only conscious thing he had left was fear. He knew he was defenseless. Not against us—against himself. Against Foul. He was already full of power when I tried to take over. What else could he do? He struck back. And then—”

For an instant, she faltered in pain. But she could not halt the momentum of the words.

“Then he saw it was me. For all he knew, he might’ve killed me. Exactly the kind of thing that terrified him most.” She gritted herself to keep from shivering in dismay. “So he closed all the doors. Shut himself off. Not to keep us out. To keep himself in.”

Deliberately she fixed Pitchwife with her glare. “There is no way to appeal to him. You can stand there and shout at him until it breaks your heart, and he won’t hear you. He’s trying to protect you.” But then she ran out of ire, and her voice trailed away as she conceded lornly, “Us.” Me.

Around her, silence spread out into the stagnant night. Starfare’s Gem lay still as if the loss of wind had slain it. The Giants remained motionless, becalmed, as if their vitality were leaking out of them into the dead Sea. Her speech seemed to hang like futility in the air,
denying hope. She could not find any end to the harm she had inflicted on her companions.

But when Pitchwife spoke again, his resilience astonished her. “Linden Avery, I hear you.” No hue or timbre of despair marred his voice. He talked as though his lifetime as a cripple had taught him to overcome anything. “But this despond ill becomes us. By my heart, I flounder to think that so many Giants may be rendered mirthless! If words have such power, then we are behooved to consider them again. Come, Chosen. You have said that Covenant Giantfriend seeks to preserve us, and that he will not hear us if we speak. Very well. What will he hear? What language will touch him?”

Linden winced. His insistence simply reaffirmed her failure.

“What does he desire?” the Giant went on steadily, “What need or yearning lies uppermost in him? Mayhap if we provide an answer to his heart, he will perceive that we are not harmed—that his protection is needless—and he will let his power go.”

She gaped at him. His question took her by surprise; and her response came automatically, without forethought. “The One Tree. The quest.” Covenant’s images were still in her. Pitchwife’s calm drew them out of her. “He doesn’t know what else to do. He needs a new Staff of Law. And we’re not moving—”

At that, Pitchwife grinned.

An inchoate prescience shocked her. She surged at him, grabbed for the front of his sark. “The One Tree? He’s dying! You don’t even know where it is!”

Pitchwife’s eyes gleamed in response. From somewhere nearby, the Storesmaster’s blunt voice said, “It may be done. I have taken soundings. This Sea is apt for
Nicor
.”

At once, the First said harshly, “Then we will make the attempt.”

A chuckle widened Pitchwife’s grin. His hale aura stroked Linden’s senses with a steady confidence she could not comprehend. “There, Chosen,” he said. “Hope. We cannot bespeak Covenant Giantfriend, to say that we are well. But we can move Starfare’s Gem. Mayhap he will feel that movement and be consoled.”

Move—? Linden’s lips formed words she could not utter. You’re kidding.

Heft Galewrath addressed her stolidly. “I can make no beginning until dawn. We must have light. And then the answer—if I am answered—may be slow in coming. Will the Giantfriend endure so long?”

“He—” Linden fought the extremity which closed her throat. Her brain kept repeating, Move Starfare’s Gem? Without wind? “I don’t know. He has the power. Maybe—maybe what he’s doing will slow down the venom. He’s shut his mind to everything else. Maybe he’s stopped the venom too. If he has—” She struggled to achieve a coherent assessment. “He’ll live until the venom eats through his heart. Or until he starves to death.”

Move
Starfare’s Gem?

Abruptly Honninscrave started shouting orders. Around him, Giants sprang into motion as if they had been brought back to life by a sense of purpose. Their feet spread new energy through the stone as they hastened to their tasks. Several of them went below toward the storage-lockers; but many more swung up into the rigging, began to furl the sails. They worked on all three masts at once, repairing the damage which behung the midmast while they clewed up and lashed the canvas fore and aft.

Linden watched them as if the confusion in her head had become an external madness. They meant to move the ship. Therefore they furled
the sails? Pitchwife had already followed the First and Galewrath forward; Honninscrave had positioned himself on the wheeldeck. And Seadreamer, who stood nearby with a private smolder in his eyes, could not speak. She felt like a lost child as she turned to Cail.

Instead of replying, he offered her a bowl of food and another flask of macerated
diamondraught
.

She accepted them because she did not know what else to do.

Deliberately she moved back into the lantern light around Covenant, sat down with her back to Foodfendhall as close to him as her nerves could bear. Her viscera still trembled at the taste of his illness, but she forced herself to remain near enough to monitor his shield—near enough to act promptly if the shield failed. And near enough to keep watch on Vain. The Demondim-spawn’s strange attentiveness had not wavered; but his obsidian flesh gave no hint of his intent. With a sigh, she leaned against the stone and compelled herself to eat.

What else could she do? She did not believe that his shield would fail. It looked as absolute as his torment. And Vain went on gazing at that caul as though he expected the Unbeliever to drop through the bottom of the world at any moment.

Later, she slept.

She awoke in the first muggy gloaming of the becalmed dawn. Without their sails, the masts above her looked skeletal against the paling sky, like boughs shorn of leaves, of life. Starfare’s Gem was little more than a floating rock under her—a slab of stone crucified between water and sky by the death of all winds. And Covenant, too, was dying: his respiration had become perceptibly shallower, more ragged. He wore his power intimately, like a winding-sheet.

The afterdeck was empty of Giants; and only two remained on the wheeldeck, Sevinhand Anchormaster and a steerswoman. No one was in the rigging, though Linden thought she glimpsed a figure sitting high overhead in Horizonscan, the lookout. Except for herself. Covenant, and Vain, Brinn, Cail, Hergrom, and Ceer, everyone had gone forward. She felt their activity through the stone.

For a while, she could not decide what to do. Her desire to learn what the Giants were about tugged at her. At the same time, she knew she belonged beside Covenant. Yet she obviously could not help him, and her uselessness wore at her. His Power, like his mind, was beyond her reach. Soon she became too tense to remain where she was. As a compromise, she went and ascended to the wheeldeck to examine Sevinhand’s broken arm.

The Anchormaster was lean for a Giant, and his old face was engraved with an un-Giant-like melancholy. In him, the characteristic cheer of his people had been eroded by a habitual grief. The lines on his cheeks looked like galls. But his mien lightened as Linden approached, and the smile with which he answered her desire to inspect his arm was plainly genuine.

He carried his limb in a sling. When she slipped back the cloth, she saw that the forearm had been properly splinted. Probing his skin with her fingers, she discerned that Cail had reported the injury accurately: the breaks were clean—and cleanly set. Already the bones had begun to knit.

She nodded her satisfaction, turned to go back to Covenant. But Sevinhand stopped her.

She looked at him inquiringly. His melancholy had returned. He remained silent for a moment while he considered her. Then he said, “Heft Galewrath will attempt a calling of
Nicor
. That is perilous.” The flinch of his eyes showed that he was personally acquainted with the danger. “Mayhap there will be sore and instant need for a healer. It is Galewrath who tends the healing of Starfare’s Gem—yet the gravest peril will befall her. Will you not offer your aid?” He nodded forward. “Surely the
Haruchai
will summon you with all speed, should you be required by Covenant Giantfriend.”

His earnest gaze moved her. The Giants had already shown their concern and support for her in many ways. Seadreamer had carried her out of Sarangrave Flat after the breaking of her ankle. And Pitchwife had tried several times to demonstrate that there were other smiles in the world than the fatal one Covenant had given Joan. She welcomed a chance to offer some kind of service in return. And she was clearly valueless to Covenant as matters stood. Vain did not appear to pose any threat.

Turning to Cail, she said, “I’m counting on you.” His slight bow of acceptance reassured her. The flatness of his visage seemed to promise that his people could be trusted beyond any possibility of dereliction or inadequacy.

As she left the wheeldeck, she felt Sevinhand’s relief smiling wanly at her back.

Hastening across the long afterdeck, she passed through Foodfendhall toward the prow of the ship. There she joined a milling press of Giants. Most were busy at tasks she did not understand; but Pitchwife noticed her arrival and moved to her side. “You are well come, Chosen,” he said lightly. “Perchance we will have need of you.”

“That’s what Sevinhand said.”

His gaze flicked aft like a wince, then returned to Linden. “He speaks from knowledge.” His misformed eyes cast a clear echo of the Anchormaster’s sorrow. “At one time—perhaps several brief human lives past—Sevinhand Mastered another Giantship, and Seatheme his wife served as Storesmaster. Ah, that is a tale worth the telling. But I will curtail it. The time is not apt for that story. And you will have other inquiries.

“To speak shortly—” Abruptly he grimaced in vexation. “Stone and Sea, Chosen! It irks my heart to utter such a tale without its full measure. I am surpassed to credit that any people who speak briefly are in good sooth alive at all.” But then his eyes widened as if he were startled by his own intensity, and his expression cleared. “Nevertheless. I bow to the time.” He saluted Linden as if he were laughing at himself. “Shortly then. Sevinhand and his Giantship sailed a Sea which we name the Soulbiter, for it is ever fell and predictless, and no craft passes it without cost. There a calm such as we now suffer came upon them. Many and many a day the vessel lay stricken, and no life stirred the sails. Water and food became dire. Therefore the choice was taken to attempt a calling of
Nicor
.

“As Storesmaster, the task fell chiefly to Seatheme, for such was her training and skill. She was a Giant to warm the heart, and—” Again he stopped. Ducking his head, he passed a hand over his eyes, muttered, “Ah, Pitchwife. Shortly.” When he looked up once more, he was smiling crookedly through his tears. “Chosen, she mistimed the catch. And rare is the Giant who returns from the jaws of the
Nicor
.”

Linden met his gaze with an awkwardness in her throat. She wanted to say something, but did not know how to offer comfort to a Giant. She could not match his smile.

Beyond the foremast, the crew had completed the construction of three large objects under Galewrath’s direction. They were coracles—boats made of leather stretched over wooden frames, each big enough to hold two Giants. But their sides rose and curved so that each vessel was three-quarters of a sphere. A complex of hawsers and iron rings connected the coracles to each other; they had to be lifted and moved together. At Galewrath’s orders, the boats were borne forward and pitched over the prow.