Maybe there's a deleted scene where Anele gets to play with the staff. Or maybe Linden's not as pretty as SRD describes her.

Otherwise, that's definitely Saruman.

I can certainly see The Mahdoubt's name as a tribute to the shaDOUT MApes - which makes sense given her role at Revelstone. But I somehow read it as a portmanteau of Mahdi and Redoubt (a word I'm positive I've seen in the Chronicles), which would make her name mean something like "one who prote...

Hi all... been reading Covenant in real time since TPTP... just finished FR and am eager to see what other fans thought and are speculating.