One Tree (20 page)

Still she could not shake off her tremorous inner disquiet. The bells would not leave her alone. They came so close to meaning, but she could not decipher their message. Her nerves tightened involuntarily.

“That’s not what Chant thinks. He thinks his truth is the only one there is.”

Daphin’s limpid gaze did not waver. “Perhaps that is true. Where is the harm? He is but one
Elohim
among many. And yet,” she went on after a moment’s consideration, “he was not always so. He has found within himself a place of shadow which he must explore. All who live contain some darkness, and much lies hidden there. Surely it is perilous, as any shadow which encroaches upon the light is perilous. But in us it has not been a matter of exigency—for are we not equal to all things? Yet for Chant that shadow has become exigent. Risking much, as he does, he grows impatient with those who have not yet beheld or entered the shadows cast by their own truths. And others tread this path with him.

“Sun-Sage.” Now a new intentness shone from Daphin—the light of a clear desire. “This you must comprehend. We are the
Elohim
, the heart of the Earth. We stand at the center of all that lives and moves and is. We live in peace because there are none who can do us hurt, and if it were our choice to sit within
Elemesnedene
and watch the Earth age until the end of Time, there would be none to gainsay us. No other being or need may judge us, just as the hand may not judge the heart which gives it life.

“But because we
are
the heart, we do not shirk the burden of the truth within us. We have said that our vision foreknew the coming of Sun-Sage and ring-wielder. It is cause for concern that they are separate. There is great need that Sun-Sage and ring-wielder should be one. Nevertheless the coming itself was known. In the mountains which cradle our
clachan
, we see the peril of this Sunbane which requires you to your quest. And in the trees of Woodenwold we have read your arrival.

“Yet had such knowing comprised the limit of our knowledge, you would have been welcomed here merely as other visitors are welcomed, in simple kindness and curiosity. But our knowledge is not so small. We have found within ourselves this shadow upon the heart of the Earth, and it has altered our thoughts. It has taught us to conceive of the Sunbane in new ways—and to reply to the Earth’s peril in a manner other than our wont.

“You have doubted us. And your doubt will remain. Perhaps it will grow until it resembles loathing. Yet I say to you, Sun-Sage, that you judge us falsely. That you should presume to judge us at all is incondign and displeasing. We are the heart of the Earth and not to be judged.”

Daphin spoke strongly; but she did not appear vexed. Rather, she asked for understanding in the way a parent might ask a child for good behavior. Her tone abashed Linden. But she also rebelled. Daphin was asking her to give up her responsibility for discernment and action; and she would not. That responsibility was her reason for being here, and she had earned it.

Then the bells seemed to rise up in her like the disapproval of
Elemesnedene
. “What
are
you?” she inquired in a constrained voice. “The heart of the Earth. The center. The truth. What does all that mean?”

“Sun-Sage,” replied Daphin, “we are the Würd of the Earth.”

She spoke clearly, but her tone was confusing. Her
Würd
sounded like
Wyrd
or
Word
.

Wyrd? Linden thought. Destiny—doom? Or Word?

Or both.

Into the silence, Daphin placed her story. It was an account of the creation of the Earth; and Linden soon realized that it was the same tale Pitchwife had told her during the calling of the
Nicor
. Yet it contained one baffling difference. Daphin did not speak of a
Worm
. Rather, she used that blurred sound,
Würd
, which seemed to signify both
Wyrd
and
Word
.

This Würd had awakened at the dawning of the eon and begun to consume the stars as if it intended to devour the cosmos whole. After a time, it had grown satiated and had curled around itself to rest, thus forming the Earth. And thus the Earth would remain until the Würd roused to resume its feeding.

It was precisely the same story Pitchwife had told. Had the Giants who had first brought that tale out of Elemesnedene misheard it? Or had the
Elohim
pronounced it differently to other visitors?

As if in answer, Daphin concluded, “Sun-Sage, we are the Würd—the direct offspring of the creation of the Earth. From it we arose, and in it we have our being. Thus we are the heart, and the center, and the truth, and therefore we are what we are. We are all answers, just as we are every question. For that reason, you must not judge the reply which we will give to your need.”

Linden hardly heard the
Elohim
. Her mind was awhirl with implications. Intuitions rang against the limits of her understanding like the clamor of bells.
We are the Würd
. Morninglight swirling with color like a portrait of the
clachan
in metaphor. A willow leaved in butterflies. Self-contemplation.

Power.

Dear God! She could hardly form words through the soundless adumbration of the chimes. The
Elohim
—! They’re Earthpower. The heart of the Earth. Earthpower incarnate.

She could not think in sequence. Hopes and insights out-raced each other. These people could do everything they wanted. They
were
everything they wanted. They could give any gift they chose for any reason of whim or conviction. Could give her what she was after. What Honninscrave desired. Give Covenant —

They were the answer to Lord Foul. The cure for the Sunbane. They—

“Daphin—” she began. What secret reply had these people already decided to give the quest? But the clanging muffled everything. Volitionlessly she protested, “I can’t think. What in hell are these
bells
?”

At that instant, Morninglight suddenly swept himself into human form, effacing the vlei. He was tall and stately, with inward eyes and gray-stroked hair. He wore a mantle like Chant’s as if it, too, were an
expression of his self-knowledge. Moving up the hillside, he turned a gentle smile toward Linden.

And as he approached, the notes in her mind said as clearly as language:

—We must hasten, lest this Sun-Sage learn to hear us too acutely.

As if she were uplifted by music, Daphin rose to her feet, extended her hand to Linden. “Come, Sun-Sage,” she said smoothly. “The
Elohimfest
awaits you.”

What the hell?

Linden could not move. The lucidity with which the soundless bells had spoken staggered her. She gaped at Daphin’s outstretched hand. It made no impression on her. Feverishly she grappled for the meaning of the music.

We must hasten
—

Had she heard that—or invented it in her confusion?

Hear us too acutely
.

Her Land-born percipience had stumbled onto something she had not been intended to receive. The speakers of the bells did not want her to know what they were saying.

She fought to concentrate. But she could not take hold of that language. Though it hushed itself as she groped toward it, it did not fall altogether silent. It continued to run in the background of her awareness like a conversation of fine crystal. And yet it eluded her. The more she struggled to comprehend it, the more it sounded like mere bells and nothing else.

Daphin and Morninglight were gazing at her as if they could read the rush of her thoughts. She needed to be left alone, needed time to think. But the eyes of the
Elohim
did not waver. Her trepidation tightened, and she recognized another need—to keep both the extent and the limitation of her hearing secret. If she were not intended to discern these bells, then in order to benefit from them she must conceal what she heard.

She had to glean every secret she could. Behind Daphin’s apparent candor, the
Elohim
were keeping their true purposes hidden. And Covenant and the rest of her companions were dependent on her, whether they knew it or not. They did not have her ears.

The music had not been silenced. Therefore she had not entirely given herself away. Yet. Trying to cover her confusion, she blinked at Daphin and asked incredulously, “Is that all? You’re done examining me? You don’t know anything about me.”

Daphin laughed lightly. “Sun-Sage, this ‘examining’ is like the ‘doing’ of which you speak so inflexibly. For us, the word has another meaning. I have considered myself and garnered all the truth of you that I require. Now come.” She repeated the outreach of her hand. “Have I not said that the
Elohimfest
awaits you? There the coming of Infelice will offer another insight. And also we will perform the asking and answering for which you have quested over such distances. Is it not your desire to attend that congregation?”

“Yes,” replied Linden, suppressing her discomfiture. “That’s what I want.” She had forgotten her hopes amid the disquieting implications of the bells. But her friends would have to be warned. She would have to find a way to ward them against the danger they could not hear. Stiffly she accepted Daphin’s hand, let the
Elohim
lift her to her feet.

With Daphin on one side and Morninglight on the other like guards, she left the hillside.

She had no sense of direction in this place; but she did not question Daphin’s lead. Instead she concentrated on concealing her thoughts behind a mask of severity.

On all sides were the wonders of
Elemesnedene
. Bedizened trees and flaming shrubs, fountains imbued with the color of ichor, animals
emblazoned like tapestries: everywhere the
Elohim
enacted astonishment as if it were merely gratuitous—the spilth or detritus of their self-contemplations. But now each of these nonchalant theurgies appeared ominous to Linden, suggestive of peril and surquedry. The bells chimed in her head. Though she fought to hold them, they meant nothing.

For one blade-sharp moment, she felt as she had felt when she had first entered Revelstone: trapped in the coercion of Santonin’s power, riven of every reason which had ever given shape or will to her life. Here the compulsion was more subtle; but it was as cloying as attar, and it covered everything with its pall. If the
Elohim
did not choose to release her, she would never leave
Elemesnedene
.

Yet surely this was not Revelstone, and the
Elohim
had nothing in common with Ravers, for Daphin’s smile conveyed no hint of underlying mendacity, and her eyes were the color of new leaves in springtime. And as she passed, the wonderments put aside their self-absorption to join her and the Sun-Sage. Melting, swirling, condensing into human form, they greeted Linden as if she were the heir to some strange majesty, then arrayed themselves behind her and moved in silence and chiming toward the conclave of the
Elohimfest
. Appareled in cymars and mantles, in sendaline and jaconet and organdy like the cortege of a celebration, they followed Linden as if to do her honor. Once again, she felt the enchantment of the
clachan
exercising itself upon her, wooing her from her distrust.

But as the
Elohim
advanced with her, the land behind them lost all its features, became a vaguely undulating emptiness under a moonstone sky. In its own way,
Elemesnedene
without the activity of the
Elohim
was as barren and sterile as a desert.

Ahead lay the only landmark Linden had seen in the whole of the
clachan
—a broad ring of dead elms. They stood fingering the opalescent air with their boughs like stricken sentinels, encompassing a place which had slain them eons ago. Her senses were able to discern the natural texture of their wood, the sapless desiccation in their hearts, the black and immemorial death of their upraised limbs. But she did not understand why natural trees could not endure in a habitation of
Elohim
.

As she neared them, escorted by Daphin and Morninglight and a bright procession of
Elohim
, she saw that they ringed a broad low bare hill which shone with accentuated light like an eftmound. Somehow the hill appeared to be the source of all the illumination in
Elemesnedene
. Or perhaps this effect was caused by the way the sky lowered over the eftmound so that the hill and the sky formed a hub around which the dead elms stood in frozen revolution. Passing between the trees, Linden felt that she was entering the core of an epiphany.

More
Elohim
were arriving from all sides. They flowed forward in their lambency like images of everything that made the Earth lovely; and for a moment Linden’s throat tightened at the sight. She could not reconcile the conflicts these folk aroused in her, did not know where the truth lay. But for that moment she felt sure she would never again meet any people so capable of beauty.

Then her attention shifted as her companions began to ascend the eftmound from various directions around the ring. Honninscrave strode there with his head high and his face aglow as if he had revisited one of his most precious memories. And from the other side came Pitchwife. When he saw the First approaching near him, he greeted her with a shout of love that brought tears to Linden’s eyes, making everything pure for an instant.

Blinking away the blur, she espied Seadreamer’s tall form rising beyond the crest of the hill. Like the First, he did not appear to
share Honninscrave’s joy. Her countenance was dour and self-contained, as if in her examination she had won a stern victory. But his visage wore a look of active pain like a recognition of peril which his muteness would not permit him to explain.

Alarmed by the implications in his eyes, Linden quickly scanned the eftmound, hunting for a glimpse of Covenant.

For a moment, he was nowhere to be seen. But then he came around the hill toward her.

He moved as if all his muscles were taut and fraying; his emanations were shrill with tension. In some way, his examination had proved costly to him. Yet the sight of him, white-knuckled and rigid though he was, gave Linden an infusion of relief. Now she was no longer alone.