I'm just playing this by ear here. I figure I'll post lots of quotes, as usual, and just expand on the chapter a bit instead of letting the quotes speak for themselves like I usually do.
It helps that I love this chapter. I love the jheherrin, helping Covenant and Foamfollower in defiance of their Maker. And I love the legend of the Pure One and its significance later in the story...
As the chapter begins, Covenant is being dragged down into the mud pit by unseen hands. He emerges in a chamber buried in the mud, and to his astonishment, he finds himself facing a group of little creatures that seem to be made out of clay.
But before he has time to say anything to them, Foamfollower appears, dragged by several more creatures.
The jheherrin return to the chamber, and everyone introduces themselves. When Foamfollower tells the jheherrin that he and Covenant plan to destroy Lord Foul, the jheherrin's response is, "It cannot be done." And then, "Come with us."Foamfollower's Giantish lungs had sustained him; he needed no time at all to recover. He flung himself around in the constricted space and lurched snarling toward the clay forms with rage in his eyes and one heavy fist upraised.
At once, the sole light went out. Amid shrill cries of fear, the mud creatures scudded away down the tunnel.
"Foamfollower!" Covenant shouted urgently. "They saved us!"
He heard the Giant come to a stop, heard him panting hoarsely. "Foamfollower," he repeated. "Giant!"
Foamfollower breathed deeply for a moment, then said, "My friend?" In the darkness, his voice sounded cramped, too full of suppressed emotions. "Are you well?"
"Well?" Covenant felt momentarily unbalanced on the brink of hysteria. But he steadied himself. "They didn't hurt me. Foamfollower - I think they saved us."
The Giant panted a while longer, regaining his self-command. "Yes," he groaned. "Yes. Now I have taught them to fear us." Then, projecting his voice down the tunnel, he said, "Please pardon me. You have indeed saved us. I have little restraint - yes, I am quick to anger, too quick. Yet without purposing to do so you wrung my heart. You took my friend and left me. I feared him dead - despair came upon me. Bannor of the Bloodguard told us to look for help wherever we went. Fool that I was, I did not look for it so near to Soulcrusher's demesne. When you took me also, I had no thought left but fury. I crave your pardon."
Empty silence answered him out of the darkness.
"Ah, hear me!" he called intently. "You have saved us from the hands of the Despiser. Do not abandon us now."
The silence stretched, then broke. "Despair is Maker-work," a voice said. "It was not our intent."
So Covenant and Foamfollower follow the jheherrin through their tunnels, until they reach a large cavern where hundreds of the creatures are assembled. As he surveys the gathering, Covenant notices that the jheherrin come in different shapes: the crude forms of people and of various types of animals.
And the jheherrin begin to tell their story."Foamfollower?" he murmured. A painful intuition twisted in him. "What are they?"
But Foamfollower asks the jheherrin why they choose to risk themselves for him and Covenant. So the jheherrin tell him their legend, the hope that keeps them going: the legend of the Pure One. Some day, they say, a pure one who is untouched by Foul's hands will come and redeem the jheherrin. And they hope that Covenant is that pure one."The Maker labors deep in the fastness of his home, breeding armies. He takes living flesh as you know living flesh, and works his own power upon it, shaping power and malice to serve his own. But his work does not always grow to his desires. At times the result is weakness rather than strength. At times his making is blind - or crippled - or stillborn. Such spawn he casts into a vast quagmire of fiery mud to be consumed."
A vibration of remembered terror filled the cavern.
"But there is another potency in that abysm. We are not slain. In agony we become the jheherrin - the soft ones. We are transformed. From the depths of the pit we crawl."
"We crawl," voices echoed.
"In lightless combs lost even to the memory of the Maker -"
"Lost."
"- we supplicate our lives."
"Lost."
"From the mud of the thorn wastes to the very walls of the Maker-place, we wander in soil and fear, searching -"
"Searching."
"- listening -"
"Listening."
"- waiting."
"Waiting."
"The surface of the Earth is denied to us. We would perish in dust if the light of the sun were to touch us. And we cannot delve - we cannot make new tunnels to lead us from this place. We are soft."
"Lost."
"And we dare not offend the Maker. We live in sufferance - he smiles upon our abjection."
"Lost."
"Yet we retain the shapes of what we were. We are" - the voice shuddered as if it feared it would be stricken for its audacity - "not servants of the Maker."
Hundreds of the jheherrin gasped in trepidation.
"Many of our combs border the passages of the Maker. We search the walls and listen. We hear - the Maker has no secret. We heard his enmity against you, his intent against you. In the name of the legend, we debated and chose. Any aid that could be concealed from the Maker, we choose to give."
The jheherrin are crushed. They all flee from the cavern, leaving Covenant and Foamfollower alone.He could feel them voicelessly asking him, imploring, Are you the pure one? If we help you, will you free us? But he could not give them the answer they wanted. Their living death deserved the truth from him, not a false hope.
Deliberately, he sacrificed their help. His voice was harsh; he sounded angry as he said, "Look at me. You know the answer. Under all this mud, I'm sick - diseased. And I've done things - I'm not pure. I'm corrupt."
It is the jheherrin who spoke for the others, the one who told the story. And despite its disappointment and anguish, it gives Covenant and Foamfollower the help they need. It tells them how to get through the maze of Kurash Qwellinir toward Foul's Creche. "Try to believe that you are pure," it tells them. And then it is gone.Covenant's chest shook with dry spasms like sobs, but he clenched himself into union with the silence. He could not bend; he would break if the rictus of his determination were forced to bend. Foul! he jerked. Foul! You're too cruel.
He felt the attempted consolation of the Giant's hand on his shoulder. He wanted to respond, wanted to utter in some way the violence of his resolve. But before he could speak, the silence seemed to flow and concentrate itself into the sound of soft weeping.
The sound grew on him as he listened. Forlorn and miserable, it rose up into the darkness like irremediable grief, made the hollow air throb. He yearned to go to the weeper, yearned to comfort it in some way. But when he moved, it found words to halt him, desolate accusation. "Despair is Maker-work."
Following its directions, Covenant and Foamfollower make their way through the passages - until they reach a tunnel that is guarded. But Foamfollower is undaunted.
And he proceeds to do exactly that, with the savage fury that terrifies Covenant."I think I will strike a blow or two against these Maker-work creatures."
What's happened to him, indeed? His "berserker" fits seem to be growing steadily worse."Foamfollower?" Covenant whispered as if the name hurt his throat. "Giant?"
"Go!" the Giant shouted, then turned back to the tunnel. With one sweep of his arm, he slammed the stone door shut.
Covenant stood blinking in the relative darkness and watched as Foamfollower snatched up the three remaining spears, took them to the doorway, then broke them in pieces and jammed the pieces into the cracks of the door to wedge it shut.
When he was done, he started away from the wall. Only then did he realize that Covenant had not obeyed him. At once, he pounced on the Unbeliever, caught him by the arm. "Fool!" he snapped, swinging Covenant toward the far passage. "Do you mock me?" But his hand was slick with blood. He lost his hold, accidentally sent Covenant reeling to jolt heavily against the stone.
Covenant slumped down the wall, gasping to regain his breath. "Foamfollower - what's happened to you?"
Spoiler
But when he comes through his caamora in Hotash Slay, he no longer has those berserker fits. He is cleaned of Foul and of all "Maker-work." And thus he fulfills the prophecy of the legend: He is the Pure One, untouched by anger, fear, or despair.
The last couple of pages of the chapter are so beautifully written that I think I'll just quote the whole thing, because any summary I can give will never do justice to it."I am the last of the Giants," Foamfollower grated. "I will give my life as I choose."
And at this point in her first reading, Foamy1013 puts down the book and goes to bed, crying because she believes her favorite character is dead.Covenant stopped wailing to hold his breath, though Foamfollower's pain seemed to burn him worse than the heat of the lava. He tried to grasp the white gold with his mind, pull strength from it to aid the Giant. But he could not tell whether or not he succeeded. The red fire blinded his perceptions. In another two strides, Foamfollower had sunk to his waist. He gripped Covenant's ankles, boosted him up so that the Unbeliever was standing on his shoulders. Covenant wavered on that heaving perch, but Foamfollower's hold on his ankles was as strong as iron, kept him erect.
Two more strides - the lava reached Foamfollower's chest. He mastered his pain for one instant to gasp out over the silent fire, "Remember the jheherrin!" Then he began to howl, driven beyond his endurance by red molten agony.
Covenant could see nothing, did not know how far they had come. Reeling over the lava, he held his breath, kept himself from joining Foamfollower's terrible scream. The Giant went on, propelled himself with his tortured legs as if he were treading water.
But finally he floundered to a stop. The weight and pain of the lava halted him. He could not wade any farther.
With one last, horrific exertion, he thrust himself upward, reared back, concentrated all his strength in his shoulders. Heaving so hard that he seemed to tear his arms from their sockets, he hurled Covenant toward the bank.
Covenant arched through the blazing light for an instant, clenched himself against the sudden pain of incineration.
He landed on dead cinders five feet from the edge of Hotash Slay. The ashes crunched under him, gave slightly, absorbed some of the impact. Gasping for breath, he rolled, staggered to his knees. He could not see; he was blind with tears. He gouged water out of his eyes with numb fingers, blinked furiously, forced his vision into focus.
Ten or more yards out in the lava, he saw one of Foamfollower's hands still above the surface. It clenched uselessly for a moment, trying to find a grip on the brimstone air. Then it followed the Giant into the molten depths.
Foamfollower! Covenant cried soundlessly. He could not find enough air to scream aloud. Foamfollower!
The heat beat back at him furiously. And through the pounding blaze came dim shouts - the approaching clamor of pursuit.
Before we are seen, Covenant remembered dumbly. Foamfollower had done this for him so that he would not be seen - so that Foul would not know that he had crossed Hotash Slay. He wanted to kneel where he was until he dissolved in heat and grief, but he stumbled to his feet.
Foamfollower! My friend!
Lumbering stiffly, he turned his back on the lava as if it were the grave of all his victims, and moved away into darkness.
After a short distance, he crossed a low, barren ridge, fell into the shallow gully beyond it. At once, a landfall of weariness buried him, and he abandoned himself to sleep. For a long time, he lay in his own night, dreaming of impossible sunlight.
~Foamy~
*Pats Foamy on the head.* Shhh. It's ok. Poor thing.
