One Tree by Stephen R. Donaldson Page A

Starfare’s Gem, rocking her coracle as she clowned.
    Heft Galewrath responded with a nod. Shifting her weight, she tilted the edge of her craft down almost to the waterline. From that position, she placed an object that looked like a one-sided drumhead in the water. Her partner helped her balance the coracle so that it remained canted without shipping water.
    Pitchwife tightened expectantly; but Galewrath’s stolid mien gave no sign that she had undertaken anything out of the ordinary. From her belt, she drew out two leather-wrapped sticks and at once began to beat on the drum, sending an intricate, cross-grained rhythm into the Sea.
    Faintly through the stone, Linden felt that beat carrying past the keel, spreading outward like a summons.
    “Pitchwife.” She was still conscious of Covenant, though the intervening Giants muffled her perception of him. He was like a bruise between her shoulder blades. But Galewrath held her attention. Anticipation of danger made her nervous. She needed to hear voices, explanations. “What the hell is going on?”
    The deformed Giant glanced at her as if to gauge the implications of her acerbic tone. After a moment, he breathed softly, “A calling of
Nicor
. The
Nicor
of the Deep.”
    That told her nothing. But Pitchwife seemed to understand her need. Before she could ask for a better answer, he went on, “Such calling is rarely greeted swiftly. Belike we confront a wait of some durance. I will tell you the tale.”
    Behind her, most of the crew had left the prow. Only the First, Honninscrave, Seadreamer, and one or two others remained; the rest ascended the ratlines. Together, they kept watch on all the horizons.
    “Chosen,” Pitchwife murmured, “have you heard the name of the Worm of the World’s End?” She shook her head. Well, no matter.” A gleam of quickening interest ran along his tone—a love for stories.
    Galewrath’s rhythm continued, complex and unvarying. As it thudded flatly into the dead air and the rising heat and the Sea, it took on a plaintive cast, like a keening of loneliness, a call for companionship. Her arms rose and fell tirelessly.
    “It is said among the
Elohim
, whose knowledge is wondrous, and difficult of contradiction”—Pitchwife conveyed a chortle of personal amusement—“that in the ancient and eternal youth of the cosmos, long ere the Earth came to occupy its place, the stars were as thick as sand throughout all the heavens. Where now we see multitudes of bright beings were formerly multitudes of multitudes, so that the cosmos was an ocean of stars from shore to shore, and the great depth of their present solitude was unknown to them—a sorrow which they could not have comprehended. They were the living peoples of the heavens, as unlike to us as gods. Grand and warm in their bright loveliness, they danced to music of their own making and were content.”
    A rustle went through the Giants watching from the foremast, then subsided. Their keen sight had picked out something in the distance; but it had vanished.
    “But far away across the heavens lived a being of another kind. The Worm. For ages it slumbered in peace—but when it awakened, as it awakens at the dawn of each new eon, it was afflicted with a ravenous hunger. Every creation contains destruction, as life contains death, and the Worm was destruction. Driven by its immense lust, it began to devour stars.
    “Perhaps this Worm was not large among the stars, but its emptiness was large beyond measure, and it roamed the heavens, consuming whole seas of brightness, cutting great swaths of loneliness across the firmament. Writhing along the ages, avid and insatiable, it fed on all that lay within its reach, until the heavens became as sparsely peopled as a desert.”
    As Linden listened, she tasted some of the reasons behind the Giants’ love of stories. Pitchwife’s soft narration wove a thread of meaning into the becalmed sky and the Sea. Such tales made the world comprehensible. The