Stephen Donaldson - The One Tree

After a day of that irregular lurch and stumble, Linden thought she was going to be seasick. The waves confused the stability she had learned to expect from the stone under her bare feet. She felt the protracted frustration of the crew vibrating through the moire-granite, felt the dromond 's prow catch the seas every way but squarely. And Covenant fretted at her side; his mood gave a pitch of urgency to the Giantship's pace. Beneath the surface of their companionship, he was febrile for his goal. She could not stifle her nausea until Pitchwife gave her a gentle mixture of diamondraught and water to quiet her stomach.

That night she and Covenant put together a pallet on the floor of her cabin so that they would not have to endure the aggravated motion of the hammock. But the next day the squalls became still more sportive. After sunset, when a gap in the clouds enabled him to take his bearings from the stars, Honninscrave announced that the quest had covered little more than a score of leagues since the previous morning. “Such is our haste,” he muttered through his beard, "that the

Isle of the One Tree may sink altogether into the sea ere we draw nigh to it."

Pitchwife chuckled. “Is it a Giant who speaks thus? Master, I had not known you to be an admirer of haste.”

Honninscrave did not respond. His eyes held reminders of Seadreamer, and his gaze was fixed on Covenant.

After a moment, Covenant said, “A few centuries after the Ritual of Desecration, a Cavewight named Drool Rockworm found the Staff of Law. One of the things he used it for was to play with the weather.”

Linden looked at him sharply. She started to ask, Do you think someone is causing-? But he went on, “I blundered into one of his little storms once. With Atiaran.” The memory roughened his tone. “I broke it. Before I believed there even was such a thing as wild magic.”

Now everyone in the vicinity was staring at him. Unspoken questions marked the silence. Carefully, the First asked, “Giantfriend, do you mean to attempt a breaking of this weather?”

For a time, he did not reply. Linden saw in the set of his shoulders, the curling of his fingers, that he wanted to take some kind of action. Even when he slept, his bones were rigid with remembered urgency. The answer to his self-distrust lay at the One Tree. But when he spoke, he said, “No.” He tried to smile. The effort made him grimace. “With my luck, I'd knock another hole in the ship.”

That night, he lay facedown on the pallet like an inverted cenotaph of himself, and Linden had to knead his back for a long time before he was able to turn and look at her.

And still the storms did not lessen. The third day made them more numerous and turbid. Linden spent most of her time on deck, peering through wind and rain for some sign that the weather might change. Covenant's tension soaked into her through her senses. The One Tree. Hope for him. For the Land. And for her? The question disturbed her. He had said that a Staff of Law could be used to send her back to her own life.

During a period of clear sky between squalls in the middle of the afternoon, they were standing at the rail halfway up the starboard foredeck, watching clouds as black as disaster drag purple and slashing rain across the water like sea-anchors, when a shout sprang from the foremast. A shout of warning. Honninscrave replied from the wheeldeck. An alarm spread through the stone. Heavy feet pounded the decks. The First and Pitchwife came trotting toward Linden and Covenant.

“What-?” Covenant began.

The Swordmain reached the rail beside Linden, pointed outward. Her gaze was as acute as a hawk's.

Pitchwife positioned himself directly behind the Unbeliever.

Suddenly, Seadreamer also appeared. For an instant, Linden leaped to the impossible conclusion that the Isle of the One Tree was near. But Seadreamer's stare lacked the precise dread which characterized his Earth-Sight. He looked like a man who saw a perilous wonder bearing down on him.

Her heart pounding, she swung to face the sea.

The First's pointing arm focused Linden's senses. With a shock of percipience, she felt an eldritch power floating toward the Giantship.

The nerves of her face tasted the weird theurgy before her eyes descried it. But then an intervening squall abruptly frayed and fell apart, dissipated as if its energy had encountered an apt and hungry lightning rod. She saw an area of calm advancing across the face of the sea.

It was wider than the length of the dromond , and its periphery was not calm. Around the rim, waterspouts kicked into the air like geysers. They burst straight upward as if no wind could touch them, reached as high as the Giantship's spars, then fanned into spray and rainbows, tumbled sun-bedizened back into the sea. In turn, irrhythmically, now here, now at the farther edge, the spouts stretched toward the sky like celebrants, defining the zone of calm with their innominate gavotte. But within their circle the sea lay fiat, motionless, and reflective-a sopor upon the heart of the deep.

The waterspouts and the calm, were moving with slow, bright delicacy toward Starfare's Gem.

Covenant tried again. “What-?” His tone was clenched and sweating, as if he felt the approaching power as vividly as Linden did.

Stiffly, the First replied, “ Merewives ” And Pitchwife added in a soft whisper, “The Dancers of the Sea.”

Linden started to ask, What are they? But Pitchwife had already begun to answer. Standing at Covenant's back, he breathed, “They are a widely told tale. I had not thought to be vouchsafed such a sight.”

The waterspouts were drawing near. Linden tasted their strength like a spray against her cheeks, though the sensation had no flavour except that of the strength itself-and of the faint poignance which seemed to arise like longing from the upward reach of the waters. But Honninscrave and Starfare's Gem made no attempt to evade the approach. All the Giants were entranced by wonder and trepidation.

“Some say,” Pitchwife went on, “that they are the female soul of the sea, seeking forever among the oceans for some male heart hardy enough to consummate them. Others say that they are the lost mates of a race which once lived within the deeps, and that their search is for their husbands, who have been slain or mazed or concealed. The truth I know not. But all tales agree that they are perilous. Their song is one which no man may gainsay or deny. Chosen, do you hear their song?” Linden did not speak. He took her response for granted. “I also do not hear it. Perhaps the merewives have no desire for Giants, as they have none for women. Our people have never suffered scathe from these folk.” His voice sharpened involuntarily as the first spouts wet the sides of the Giantship. “Yet for other men-!”

Linden recoiled instinctively. But the spray was only saltwater. The strength of the merewives did not touch her. She heard no song, although she sensed some kind of passion moving around her, intensifying the air like a distant crepitation. Then the first spouts had passed the dromond , and Star fare's Gem sat inside the zone of calm, resting motionless within a girdle of rainbows and sun-diamonds and dancing. The sails hung in their lines, deprived of life. Slowly, the Giantship began to revolve as if the calm had become the eye of a whirlpool.

“If they are not answered,” Pitchwife concluded, nearly shouting, “they will pass.”

Linden heard the strain in his voice, the taut silence beside her. With a jerk, she looked toward Covenant.

He was bucking and twisting against Pitchwife's rigid grasp on his shoulders.

THE call of the merewives went through Covenant like an awl, so bright and piercing that he would not have known it for music if his heart had not leaped up in response. He did not feel himself plunging against Pitchwife's hold, did not know that he was gaping and gasping as if he could no longer breathe air, were desperate to inhale water. The song consumed him. Its pointed loveliness and desire entered him to the marrow. Vistas of grandeur and surcease opened beyond the railing as if the music had words –