One Tree by Stephen R. Donaldson Page A

did not respond, though she knew he could not heal himself. The Despiser’s venom was a moral poison, and he had no health-sense to guide his fire. Even if his power had been hers to wield as she willed, she might not have been able to burn out that ill without tearing up his life by the roots.
    Then Pitchwife came toward her. She heard his determination to speak in the rhythm of his stride. But when she turned her head to him,the sight of her flagrant visage silenced him. After a moment, he retreated with a damp sheen of moonlight or tears in his misshapen eyes.
    She thought then that she would be left alone. But soon she felt another Giant looming nearby. Without looking at him, she recognized Seadreamer by his knotted aura. He had come to share his muteness with her. He was the only Giant who suffered anything comparable to her vision, and the pervading sadness of his mood held no recrimination. Yet after a time his silence seemed to pull at her, asking for answers.
    “Because I’m afraid.” His muteness enabled her to speak. “It terrifies me.
    “I can understand what Covenant’s doing. His love for the Land—” She envied Covenant his passion, his accessible heart. She had nothing like it. “I’d do anything to help him. But I don’t have that kind of power.”
    Then she could not stop; she had to try to explain herself. Her voice slipped out into the night without touching the air or the Sea. But her companion’s gentle presence encouraged her.
    “It’s all possession. Lord Foul possessed Joan to make Covenant come to the Land.” Joan’s face had worn a contortion of predatory malice which still haunted Linden. She could not forget the woman’s thirst for Covenant’s blood. “A Raver possessed Marid to get that venom into him. A Raver possessed the na-Mhoram of the Clave so that the Clave would serve the Sunbane. And the Sunbane itself! Foul is trying to possess the Law. He wants to make himself the natural order of the Earth. Once you start believing in evil, the greatest evil there is is
possession
. It’s a denial of life—of humanity. Whatever you possess loses everything. Just because you think you’re doing it for reasons like pity or help doesn’t change what it
is
. I’m a doctor, not a Raver.”
    She tried to give her insistence the force of affirmation; but it was not true enough for that.
    “He needs me to go into him. Take over. Control him so he can drink some
diamondraught
, stop righting the people who want to help him. But that’s evil. Even if I’m trying to save him.” Struggling to put the truth into words, she said, “To do it, I’d have to take his power away from him.”
    She was pleading for Seadreamer’s comprehension. “When I was in Revelstone, Gibbon touched me. I learned something about myself then.” The na-Mhoram had told her she was evil. That was the truth. “There’s a part of me that wants to do it. Take over him. Take his power. I don’t have any of my own, and I want it.”
Want
it. All her life, she had striven for power, for effectiveness against death. For the means to transcend her heritage—and to make restitution. If she had possessed Covenant’s power, she would have gladly torn Gibbon soul from body in the name of her own crime. “That’s what paralyzes me. I’ve spent my life trying to deny evil. When it shows up, I can’t escape it.” She did not know how to escape the contradiction between her commitment to life and her yearning for the dark might of death. Her father’s suicide had taught her a hunger she had satisfied once and dreaded to face again. The conflict of her desires had no answer. In its own way, Gibbon-Raver’s touch had been no more horrible than her father’s death; and the black force of her memories made her shiver on the verge of crying.
    “Yet you must aid him.”
    The hard voice pierced Linden. She turned sharply, found herself facing the First of the Search. She had been so caught up in what she was saying