“Yes,” murmured Covenant. Softly, he quoted, “ 'And the glory of the world becomes less than it was.' ” But he did not explain himself or offer a second tale.
A pause came over the Giants while they waited for a new story or song to commence. Then the dimness in front of Linden and Covenant swirled, and Findail appeared like a translation of the lamplight. His arrival sparked a few startled exclamations; but quiet was restored almost at once. His strangeness commanded the attention of the gathering.
When the stillness was complete beyond the faint movements of the sheets and the wet stone-on-sea soughing of the dromond, he said in a low voice, “I will tell a tale, if I may.”
With a stiff nod, the First granted him permission. She appeared uncertain of him, but not reluctant to hear whatever he might say. Perhaps he would give some insight into the nature or motives of his people. Linden tensed, focused all her senses on the Appointed. At her side, Covenant drew his back straight as if in preparation for a hostile act.
But Findail did not begin his tale at once. Instead, he lifted his eroded visage to the stars, spread his arms as if to bare his heart, and raised a song into the night.
His singing was unlike anything Linden had heard before. It was melodic in an eldritch way which tugged at her emotions. And it was self-harmonized on several levels at once, as if he were more than one singer. Just as he occasionally became stone or wind or water, he now became song; and his music arose, not from the human form he had elected to wear, but from his essential being. It was so weird and wonderful that Linden was surprised to find she could understand the words.
"Let those who sail the Sea bow down;
Let those who walk bow low;
For there is neither peace nor dream
Where the Appointed go.
"Let those who sail the Sea bow down,
For they have never seen
The Earth-Wrack rise against the stars
And ruin blowing keen.
"Mortality has mortal eyes.
Let those who walk bow low,
For they are chaff before the blast
Of what they do not know.
"The price of sight is risk and dare
Or loss of life and all,
For there is neither peace nor dream
When Earth begins to fall.
“And therefore let the others bow
Who neither see nor know;
For they are spared from voyaging
Where the Appointed go.”
The song arose from him without effort, and when it was done it left conviction like an enhancement behind it. In spite of her instinctive distrust, her reasons for anger, Linden found herself thinking that perhaps the Elohim were indeed honest. They were beyond her judgment. How could she understand-much less evaluate-the ethos of a people who partook of everything around them, sharing the fundamental substance of the Earth?
Yet she resisted. She had too many causes for doubt. One song was not answer enough. Holding herself detached, she waited for the Appointed's tale.
Quietly over the stilled suspirations of the Giants, he began. For his tale he resumed his human voice, accepted the stricture of a mortal throat with deliberate forbearance, as if he did not want his hearers to be swayed for the wrong reasons. Or, Linden thought, as if his story were poignant to him, and he needed to keep his distance from it.
“The Elohim are unlike the other peoples of the Earth,” he said into the lantern-light and the dark. "We are of the Earth, and the Earth is of us, more quintessentially and absolutely than any other manifestation of life. We are its Wurd. There is no other apposite or defining name for us. And therefore have we become a solitary people, withholding ourselves from the outer world, exercising care in the encroachments we permit the outer world to have upon us. How should we do otherwise? We have scant cause to desire intercourse with lives other than ours. And it is often true that those who seek us derive scant benefit from what they find.
"Yet it was not always so among us. In a time which we do not deem distant, but which has been long forgotten among your most enduring memories, we did not so hold to ourselves. From the home and centre of Elemesnedene, we sojourned all the wide Earth, seeking that which we have now learned to seek within ourselves. In the way of the Earth, we do not age. But in our own way, we were younger than we are. And in our youngness we roamed many places and many times, participating perhaps not always wisely in that which we encountered.
"But of that I do not speak. Rather, I speak of the Appointed. Of those who have gone before me, passing out of name and choice and time for the sake of the frangible Earth. The fruit of sight and knowledge, they have borne the burdens upon which much or all of the Earth has depended.
"Yet in their work youth has played its part. In past ages upon occasion we accepted-I will not say smaller-but less vital hazards. Perceiving a need which touched our hearts, we met together and Appointed one to answer that need. I will name one such, that you may comprehend the manner of need of which I speak. In the nigh-unremembered past of the place which you deem the Land, the life was not the life of men and women, but of trees. One wide forest of sentience and passion filled all the region-one mind and heart alive in every leaf and bough of every tree among the many myriad throngs and glory of the woods. And that life the Elohim loved.
"But a hate rose against the forest, seeking its destruction. And this was dire, for a tree may know love and feel pain and cry out, but has few means of defence. The knowledge was lacking. Therefore we met, and from among us Appointed one to give her life to that forest. This she did by merging among the trees until they gained the knowledge they required.
“Their knowledge they employed to bind her in stone, exercising her name and being to form an interdict against that hate. Thus was she lost to herself and to her people-but the interdict remained while the will of the forest remained to hold it.”
“The Colossus,” Covenant breathed. “The Colossus of the Fall.”
“Yes,” Findail said.
"And when people started coming to the Land, started cutting down the trees as if they were just so much timber and difficulty, the forest used what it'd learned to create the Forestals in self-defence. Only it took too long, and there were too many people, and the Forestals weren't enough, they couldn't be everywhere at once, couldn't stop the many blind or cruel or simply unscrupulous axes and fires. They were lucky to keep the mind of the forest awake as long as they did."
“Yes,” Findail said again.
“Hellfire!” Covenant rasped, “Why didn't you do something?”
“Ring-wielder,” replied the Elohim, "we had become less young. And the burden of being Appointed is loathly to us, who are not made for death. Therefore we grew less willing to accept exigencies not our own. Now we roam less, not that we will know less-for what the Earth knows we will know wherever we are-but that we will be less taken by the love which leads to death.
“But,” he went on without pause, "I have not yet told my tale. I desire to speak of Kastenessen, who alone of those who have been Appointed sought to refuse the burden.
"In the youth of the Elohim, he was more youthful than others-a youth such as Chant is now, headstrong and abrupt, but of another temperament altogether. Among those who sojourned, he roved farther and more often. At the time of his election, he was not present in Elemesnedene,
"Rather, he inhabited a land to the east, where the Elohim are neither known nor guessed. And there he did that which no Elohim has ever done. He gave himself in love to a mortal woman. He walked among her folk as a man of their own kind. But in her private home he was an Elohim to ravish every conception of which flesh that dies is capable.