Shortly after noon, while she was still at work, he came out of his bedroom. He moved groggily, his gait blurred with sleep. He peered at her across the room as if he were summoning anger; but his voice held nothing except resignation. "You can't help her now. You might as well go home."
She stood up to face him. "I want to help you."
"I can handle it."
Linden swallowed bile, tried not to sound acerbic. "Somehow, you don't look that tough. You couldn't stop them from taking her. How are you going to make them give her back?"
His eyes widened; her guess had struck home. But he did not waver. He seemed almost inhumanly calm-or doomed. "They don't want her. She's just a way for them to get at me."
"You?" Was he paranoiac after all? "Are you trying to tell me that this whole thing happened to her because of you? Why?"
"I haven't found that out yet."
"No. I mean, why do you think this has anything to do with you? If they wanted you, why didn't they just take you? You couldn't have stopped them."
"Because it has to be voluntary." His voice had the fiat timbre of over-stressed cable in a high wind. He should have snapped long ago. But he did not sound like a man who snapped. "He can't just force me. I have to choose to do it. Joan -- " A surge of darkness occluded his eyes. "She's just his way of exerting pressure. He has to take the chance that I might refuse."
He. Linden's breathing came heavily. "You keep saying he, Who is he?
His frown made his face seem even more malformed. "Leave it alone." He was trying to warn her. "You don't believe in possession. How can I make you believe in possessors?"
She took his warning, but not in the way he intended. Hints of purpose-half guesswork, half determination-unexpectedly lit her thoughts. A way to learn the truth. He had said, You're going to have to find some way to do it behind my back. Well, by God, if that was what she had to do, she would do it.
"All right," she said, glaring at him to conceal her intentions. "I can't make you make sense. Just tell me one thing. Who was that old man? You knew him."
Covenant returned her stare as if he did not mean to answer. But then he relented stiffly. "A harbinger. Or a warning. When he shows up, you've only got two choices. Give up everything you ever understood, and take your chances. Or run for your life. The problem is" -- his tone took on a peculiar resonance, as if he were trying to say more than he could put into words, -- "he doesn't usually waste his time talking to the kind of people who run away. And you can't possibly know what you're getting into."
She winced inwardly, fearing that he had guessed her intent. But she held herself firm. "Why don't you tell me?"
"I can't." His intensity was gone, transformed back into resignation. "It's like signing a blank check. That kind of trust, fool-hardiness, wealth, whatever, doesn't mean anything if you know how much the check is going to be for. You either sign or you don't. How much do you think you can afford?"
"Well, in any case" -- she shrugged -- "I don't plan to sign any blank checks. I've done about all I can stand to clean up this place. I'm going home." She could not meet his scrutiny. "Dr. Berenford wants you to eat. Are you going to do it, or do I have to send him back out here?"
He did not answer her question. "Goodbye, Dr. Avery."
"Oh, dear God," she protested in a sudden rush of dismay at his loneliness. "I'm probably going to spend the rest of the day worrying about you. At least call me Linden."
"Linden." His voice denied all emotion. "I can handle it."
"I know," she murmured, half to herself. She went out into the thick afternoon. I'm the one who needs help.
Two very important things are revealed in this exchange.
1. Covenant knows he has to sacrifice himself to Foul to free Joan.
2. Covenant knows that the Creator chose Linden, and he realizes that she is not going to "run away." Even tho he wants her too.
And we have soooooo much foreshadowing here... the sacrifice, Linden't disbelief of possessors and possession, the blood...
The lurching of her heart almost daunted her. But she resisted it. Carefully, she raised her head to the window just as a fist hammered at the door.
Covenant flinched at the sound. Dread knurled his face.
The sight of his reaction stung Linden. He was such a potent individual, seemed to have so many strengths which she lacked. How had he been brought to this?
But an instant later he crushed his fear as if he were stamping on the neck of a viper. Defying his own weakness, he strode toward the door.
It opened before he reached it. A lone man stepped uninvited out of the dark. Linden could see him clearly. He wore burlap wound around him like cerements. Ash had been rubbed unevenly into his hair, smeared thickly over his cheeks. It emphasized the deadness of his eyes, so that he looked like a ghoul in masque.
"Covenant?" Like his mien, his voice was ashen, dead.
Covenant faced the man. He seemed suddenly taller, as if he were elevated by his own hard grasp on life. "Yes."
"Thomas Covenant?"
The writer nodded impatiently. "What do you want?"
"The hour of judgment is at hand." The man stared into the room as if he were blind. "The Master calls for your soul. Will you come?"
Covenant's mouth twisted into a snarl. "Your master knows what I can do to him."
The man did not react. He went on as if his speech had already been arrayed for burial. "The woman will be sacrificed at the rising of the full moon. Expiation must be made for sin. She will pay if you do not. This is the commandment of the Master of life and death. Will you come?"
Sacrificed? Linden gaped. Expiation? A flush of indignation burned her skin. What the hell -- ?
Covenant's shoulders knotted. His eyes flamed with extreme promises, threats. "I'll come."
Whew, powerful stuff that. "Your master knows what I can do to him." Already he is resolved to do what must be done. Covenant is no longer an "Unbeliever" He's ready to accept what he must.
A figure began to take shape in the heart of the blaze.
More people moved to sacrifice their hands. As they did so, the figure solidified. It was indistinct in the flames; but the glaring red outlined a man in a flowing robe. He stood blood-limned with his arms folded across his powerful chest-created by pain out of fire and self-abandonment.
The worshipper with the knife sank to his knees, cried out in exaltation, "Master!"
The figure's eyes were like fangs, carious and yellow; and they raged venomously out of the flames. Their malignance cowed Linden like a personal assault on her sanity, her conception of life. They were rabid and deliberate, like voluntary disease, fetid corruption. Nothing in all her life had readied her to witness such palpable hate.
Across the stillness, she heard Covenant gasp in fury, "Foul! Even children?" But his wrath could not penetrate the dread which paralyzed her. For her, the fiery silence was punctuated only by the screaming of the burned.
Then the moon began to rise opposite her. A rim as white as bone crested the hill, looked down into the hollow like a leer.
The man with the knife came to his feet. Again he raised his arms, brandished his dagger. His personal transport was approaching its climax. In a shout like a moan, he cried, "Now is the hour of apocalypse! The Master has come! Doom is at hand for those who seek to thwart His will. Now we will witness vengeance against sin and life, we who have watched and waited and suffered in His name. Here we fulfill the vision that was given to us. We have touched the fire, and we have been redeemed!" His voice rose until he was shrieking like the burned. "Now we will bring all wickedness to blood and eternal torment!"
He's mad. Linden clung to that thought, fought to think of these people as fanatics, driven wild by destitution and fear. They're all crazy. This is impossible. But she could not move.
And Covenant did not move. She yearned for him to do something, break the trance somehow, rescue Joan, save Linden herself from her extremity. But he remained motionless, watching the fire as if he were trapped between savagery and helplessness.
The figure in the blaze stirred. His eyes focused the flames like twin scars of malice, searing everything with his contempt. His right arm made a gesture as final as a sentence of execution.
At once, the brawny man dropped to his knees. Bending over Joan, he bared her throat. She lay limp under him, frail and lost. The skin of her neck seemed to gleam in the firelight like a plea for help.
Trembling as if he were rapturous or terrified, the man set his blade against Joan's white throat.
Now the people in the hollow stared emptily at his hands. They appeared to have lost all interest in Covenant. Their silence was appalling. The man's hands shook.
"Stop!"
Covenant's shout scourged the air.
"You've done enough! Let her go!"
The baleful eyes in the fire swung at him, nailed him with denigration. The worshipper at Joan's throat stared whitely upward. "Release her?" he croaked. "Why?"
"Because you don't have to do this!" Anger and supplication thickened Covenant's tone. "I don't know how you were driven to this. I don't know what went wrong with your life. But you don't have to do it."
The man did not blink; the eyes in the fire clenched him. Deliberately, he knotted his free hand in Joan's hair.
"All right!" Covenant barked immediately. "All right. I accept. I'll trade you. Me for her."
"No." Linden strove to shout aloud, but her cry was barely a whisper. "No"
The worshippers were as silent as gravestones.
Slowly, the man with the knife rose to his feet. He alone seemed to have the capacity to feel triumph; he was grinning ferally as he said, "It is as the Master promised."
He stepped back. At the same time, a quiver ran through Joan. She raised her head, gaped around her. Her face was free of possession. Moving awkwardly, she climbed to her feet. Bewildered and afraid, she searched for an escape, for anything she could understand.
She saw Covenant.
"Tom!" Springing from the rock, she fled toward him and threw herself into his arms.
He hugged her, strained his arms around her as if he could not bear to lose her. But then, roughly, he pushed her away. "Go home," he ordered. "It's over. You'll be safe now." He faced her in the right direction, urged her into motion.
She stopped and looked at him, imploring him to go with her.
"Don't worry about me." A difficult tenderness softened his tone. "You're safe now-that's the important thing. I'll be all right." Somehow, he managed to smile. His eyes betrayed his pain. The light from the fire cast shadows of self-defiance across his bruised mien. And yet his smile expressed so much valor and rue that the sight of it tore Linden's heart.
Breathtaking. I remember thinking the very first time I read this. "He's changed so much. Wow. He smiled for her..."
Suicide. Linden's father had killed himself. Her mother had begged for death. Her revulsion toward such things was a compelling obsession.
But Thomas Covenant had chosen to die. And he had smiled.
For Joan's sake.
Linden had never seen one person do so much for another.
She could not endure it. She already had too much blood on her hands. Dashing the tears from her eyes, she looked up.
Covenant moved among the people as if he were beyond hope. The man with the knife guided him into the triangle of blood. The carious eyes in the fire blazed avidly.
It was too much. With a passionate wrench, Linden broke the hold of her dismay, jumped upright.
"Over here!" she yelled. "Police! Hurry! They're over here!" She flailed her arms as if she were signaling to people behind her.
The eyes of the fire whipped at her, hit her with withering force. In that instant, she felt completely vulnerable, felt all her secrets exposed and devoured. But she ignored the eyes. She sped downward, daring the worshippers to believe she was alone.
Covenant whirled in the triangle. Every line of his stance howled, No!
People cried out. Her charge seemed to shatter the trance of the fire. The worshippers were thrown into confusion. They fled in all directions, scattered as if she had unpent a vast pressure of repugnance. For an instant, she was wild with hope.
But the man with the knife did not flee. The rage of the bonfire exalted him. He slapped his arms around Covenant, threw him to the stone, kicked him so that he lay flat.
The knife -- ! Covenant was too stunned to move.
Linden hurled herself at the man, grappled for his arms. He was slick with ashes, and strong. She lost her grip.
Covenant struggled to roll over. Swiftly, the man stooped to him, pinned him with one hand, raised the knife in the other.
Linden attacked again, blocked the knife. Her fingernails gouged the man's face.
Yowling, he dealt her a blow which stretched her on the rock.
Everything reeled. Darkness spun at her from all sides.
She saw the knife flash.
Then the eyes of the fire blazed at her, and she was lost in a yellow triumph that roared like the furnace of the sun.
she was lost in a yellow triumph that roared like the furnace of the sun.