Free One Tree by Stephen R. Donaldson Page A

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 furledthe 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