One Tree by Donaldson Stephen R

Author:Donaldson, Stephen R. [Donaldson, Stephen R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-81921-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN: “Don’t touch me”

Thomas Covenant saw everything. He heard everything. From the moment when the Elohim had opened the gift of Caer-Caveral, the location of the One Tree, all his senses had functioned normally. Yet he remained as blank as a stone tablet from which every commandment had been effaced. What he saw and heard and felt simply had no meaning to him. In him, the link between action and impact, perception and interpretation, had been severed or blocked. Nothing could touch him.

The strange self-contradictions of the Elohim had not moved him. The storm which had nearly wrecked Starfare’s Gem had conveyed nothing to him. The dangers to his own life—and the efforts of people like Brinn, Seadreamer, and Linden to preserve him—had passed by him like babblings in an alien tongue. He had seen it all. Perhaps on some level he had understood it, for he lacked even the exigency of incomprehension. Nothing which impinged upon him was defined by the barest possibility of meaning. He breathed when breath was necessary. He swallowed food which was placed in his mouth. At times, he blinked to moisten his eyes. But these reflexes also were devoid of import. Occasionally an uneasiness as vague as mist rose up in him; but when he uttered his refrain, it went away.

Those three words were all that remained of his soul.

So he watched Kasreyn’s attempt to gain possession of him with a detachment as complete as if he were made of stone. The hungry geas which burned from the Kemper’s ocular had no effect. He was not formed of any flesh which could be persuaded. And likewise the way his companions defended him sank into his emptiness and vanished without a trace. When Kasreyn, Rant Absolain, and the Chatelaine made their separate ways out of The Majesty, Covenant was left unchanged.

Yet he saw everything. He heard everything. His senses functioned normally. He observed the appraising glance which Findail cast at him as if the Appointed were measuring this Elohim-wrought blankness against the Kemper’s hunger. And he witnessed the flush of shame and dismay which rushed into Linden’s face as Kasreyn’s will lost its hold over her. Her neck corded at the effort she made to stifle her instinctive outcry. She feared possession more than any other thing—and she had fallen under Kasreyn’s command as easily as if she lacked all volition. Through her teeth, she gasped, “Jesus God!” But her frightened and furious glare was fixed on Rire Grist, and she did not answer the consternation of her companions. Her taut self-containment said plainly that she did not trust the Caitiffin.

The sight of her in such distress evoked Covenant’s miasmic discomfort; but he articulated his three words, and they carried all trouble away from him.

He heard the raw restraint in the First’s tone as she replied to the Caitiffin, “We will accompany you. Our need for rest and peace is great. Also we must give thought to what has transpired.”

Rire Grist acknowledged the justice of her tone with a grimace.

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