Free One Tree by Stephen R. Donaldson

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