White Gold Wielder, Chapter 19: Hold Possession

TWL, TOT, WGW

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malinda_maloney
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Post by malinda_maloney »

Grimmand Honninscrave wrote:Could it be that Foul was a part of Covenant also. He was a writer what makes him a creator of sorts and Foul could be the reverse part of him. Just a thought. :roll:
Doesn' Covenant say that they are? Just a sec... let me look.
"Talk's cheap. You can say anything you want. But you're wrong, and you ought to know it. This time you've gone too far. What you did to Andelain. What you're doing to Linden - " He swallowed acid. "We aren't enemies. That's just another lie. Maybe you believe it - but it's still a lie. You should see yourself. You're even starting to look like me. "The special gleam of his gaze reached Linden like a gif. He was irremediably insane - or utterly indomitable. "You're just another part of me. Just one side of what it means to be human. The sdie that hates lepers. The poisonous side. " His certainty did not waver at all. "We are one."
I also think he knew what he had to do after the Banefire. He was confirmed of all doubts when Glimmermere recognized him.

But way to pay the ultimate sacrifice.
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Post by Niftium »

Brief note to update sightings of the phrase "the last/final dark":
She had not mustered the bare decency to cry aloud as she strangled her mother, drove that poor sick woman terrified and alone into the last dark.
Note that this seems to ruin my theory that the last dark was some sort of dream/sleep - this dark is a horrible death.
When he weakly lifted his half-hand, began tugging the ring from his finger, Linden forgave him. No choice by to surrender it. He had done everything possible, everything conceivable, had surpassed himself again and again in his efforts to save the Land. That he failed now was cause for grief, but not for blame.

Only his eyes showed no collapse. They burned like the final dark, the last deep midnight where no Sunbane shone.
Er, wait. So the last dark is death, while the final dark is sleep? Sheesh, and I thought he only did numbers on my brain with BIG words. :lol:

At any rate, this only seems to muddle the issue even more and probably will not help anyone get a better grasp of the phrase before SRD explains it.
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Post by Zarathustra »

Both descriptions, whatever they mean, make me want to weep with the beauty Donaldson can convey, even for something as dark as death. This man is in touch with his Being, with what it means to be human. I'm humbled reading his work.
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Post by Cord Hurn »

Yet she held. Stubbornly, uselessly, almost without reason, she clung to who she was, to the Linden Avery who made promises. And in the secret recesses of her heart she plotted moksha Jehannum's downfall.

Oh, but the way seemed long to her! But she knew, had no defense against knowing, that for the Raver the distance was short and eager, little more than a stone's throw along the black gulf. Then the dank light of Covenant's guards picked out a stairway cut into the left wall. It was a rude ascent, roughly hacked from the sheer stone immemorially long ago and worn blunt by use; but it was wide and safe. The Raver went upward with strong strides, almost jaunty in its anticipation. But Linden watched Covenat for signs of vertigo or collapse.

His plight was awful. She felt his bruises aching in the bones of his skull, read the weary limp of his pulse. Sweat like fever or failure beaded on his forehead. An ague of exhaustion made all his movements awkward and imprecise. Yet he kept going, as rigid of intent as he had been on Haven Farm when he had walked into the woods to redeem his ex-wife. His very weakness and imbalance seemed to support him.

He was entirely out of his mind; and Linden bled for him while moksha Jehannum raked her with scorn.
Just as Thomas Covenant can be paradoxically mad and sane, so he is also paradoxically weak and strong. And this paradox of being vulnerable and strong applies to Linden Avery as well. I enjoy that thought that our weaknesses can be turned into strengths. And wow, is it an exhilarating idea that in this chapter Linden goes from being a captive to being strong enough to ignore the Despiser and make him wait for the ring if she wants to! A pretty dynamic chapter, I say! Fun to re-read again and again!
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Post by Cord Hurn »

This is a great build-up towards our finding out which Raver has possessed Linden Avery, because the description leading up to that moment skillfully intensifies the horror of being taken over.
She was not laughing.

Laughter came out of her mouth. It sprang from her corded throat to scale like gibbering up into the black abyss. Her lungs drew the air which became malice and glee. Her face was contorted like the vizard of a demon--or the rictus of her mother's asphyxiation.

But she was not laughing. It was not Linden Avery who laughed.

It was the Raver.

It held possession of her as completely as if she had been born for its use, formed and nurtured for no other purpose than to provide flesh for its housing, limbs for its actions, lungs and throat for its malign joy. It bereft her of will and choice, voice and protest. At one time, she had believed that her hands were trained and ready, capable of healing--a physician's hands. But now she had no hands with which to grasp her possessor and fight it. She was a prisoner in her own body and the Raver's evil.

And that evil excoriated every niche and nerve of her being. It was heinous and absolute beyond bearing. It consumed her with its memories and purposes, crushed her independent existence with the force of its ancient strength. It was the corruption of the Sunbane mapped and explicit in her personal veins and sinews. It was the revulsion and desire which had secretly ruled her life, the passion for and against death. It was the fetid halitus of the most diseased mortality condensed to its essence and elevated to the transcendence of prophecy, promise, suzerain truth--the definitive commandment of darkness.

All her life, she had been vulnerable to this. It had thronged into her from her father's stretched laughter, and she had confirmed it by stuffing it down her mother's abject throat. Once, she had flattered herself that she was like the Land under the Sunbane, helplessly exposed to desecration. But that was false. The Land was innocent.

She was evil.

Laughter came out of her mouth. It sprang from her corded throat to scale like gibbering up into the black abyss. Her lungs drew the air which became malice and glee. Her face was contorted like the vizard of a demon--or the rictus of her mother's asphyxiation. The Raver's possession is a presence that's crazy and ruinous. And the first time I read this chapter is the first time I think I've ever read the word, "vizard". :E

It held possession of her as completely as if she had been born for its use, formed and nurtured for no other purpose than to provide flesh for its housing, limbs for its actions, lungs and throat for its malign joy. The Raver's possession is presumptive, aggressive, and also rather darned inconsiderate. :E

And that evil excoriated every niche and nerve of her being. It was heinous and absolute beyond bearing. The Raver's possession is horribly sadistic. :E

All her life, she had been vulnerable to this. It had thronged into her from her father's stretched laughter, and she had confirmed it by stuffing it down her mother's abject throat. The Raver's possession carries an assertive right that its victims deserve their fate due to their past actions or failures. :E

All this tightens up the tension really nicely. SRD's skills are at full power here! 8) :thumbsup:
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Post by Cord Hurn »

In Chapter 19 of [i]White Gold Wielder[/i] was wrote:Its name was moksha Jehannum, and it brought its past with it. She remembered now as if all its actions were her own. The covert ecstasy with which it had mastered Marid--the triumph of the blow that had driven hot iron into Nassic's human back (and the rich blood frothing at the heat of the blade)--the cunning which had led moksha to betray its possession of Marid to her new percipience, so that she and Covenant would be condemned and Marid would be exposed to the perverting sun. She remembered bees. Remembered the apt mimesis of madness in the warped man who had set a spider to Covenant's neck. She might as well have done those things herself.

But behind them lay deeper crimes. Empowered by a piece of the Illearth Stone, she had mastered a Giant. She had named herself Fleshharrower and had led the Despiser's armies against the Lords. And she had tasted victory when she had trapped the defenders of the Land between her own forces and the savage forest of Garroting Deep--the forest which she hated, had hated for all the long centuries, hated in every green leaf and drop of sap from tree to tree--the forest which should have been helpless against ravage and fire, would have been helpless if some outer knowledge had not intervened, making possible the interdict of the Colossus of the Fall, the protection of the Forestals.

Yet she had been tricked into entering the Deep, and so she had fallen victim to the Deep's guardian, Caerroil Wildwood. Unable to free herself, she had been slain in torment and ferocity on Gallows Howe, and her spirit had been sorely pressed to keep itself alive.

For that reason among many others, moksha Jehannum was avid to exact retribution. Linden was only one small morsel to the Raver's appetite. Yet her possessor savored the pleasure her futile anguish afforded. Her body it left unharmed for its own use. But it violated her spirit as fundamentally as rape. And it went on laughing.

Her father's laughter, pouring like a flood of midnight from the old desuetude of the attic; a throng of nightmares in which she foundered; triumph hosting out of the dire cavern and plunge which had once been his frail mouth. You never loved me anyway. Never loved him--or anyone else. She had not mustered the bare decency to cry aloud as she strangled her mother, drove that poor sick woman terrified and alone into the last dark.

This was what Joan had felt, this appalled and desperate horror which made no difference of any kind, could not so much as muffle the sound of malice. Buried somewhere within herself, Joan had watched her own fury for Covenant's blood, for the taste of his pain. And now Linden looked out at him as if through moksha Jehannum's eyes, heard him with ears that belonged to the Raver. Lit only by the ghoulish emanations of the creatures, he stood in the bottom of the crevice like a man who had just been maimed. His damaged arm dangled at his side. Every line of his body was abused with need and near-prostration. The bruises on his face made his visage appear misshapen, deformed by the pressures building inside him, where the wild magic was manacled. Yet his eyes gleamed like teeth, focused such menace toward the Ravers that moksha Jehannum's brother had not dared to strike him again.
Something that SRD does regularly in his stories is "the recap", and I like those reminders very much. That way, I feel more connected to what has gone before, and it somehow makes the Land have more continuity, feel more real and important, by including these brief summaries of things that happened in the Land's past. It also somehow makes the present moment seem more threatening and dangerous--therefore, more suspenseful. Emphasizing Covenant's physical weakness as he is approaching the crisis moment of his confrontation with LF adds to the suspense, too. I enjoy it every time, as it keeps me slowly and carefully savoring all the details as I read along.
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Post by Cord Hurn »

There are two passages in this chapter that I think are thematically central to the entire Second Chronicles story, perhaps central to the entire series of Chronicles books, where there is no external action but deep internal struggle is happening.
"Take me to Foul," he said. He had lost his mind. This was not despair; it was too fierce for despair. It was madness. The Banefire had cost him his sanity. "I'll give him the ring."

His gaze lanced straight into Linden. If she had owned a voice, she would have cried out.

He was smiling like a sacrifice.

Then she found that she did not have to watch him. The Raver could not require consciousness of her. Its memories told her that most of its victims had simply fled into mindlessness. The moral paralysis which had made her so accessible to moksha Jehannum would protect her now, not from use but from awareness. All she had to do was let go her final hold upon her identity. Then she would be spared from witnessing the outcome of Covenant's surrender.

With glee and hunger, the Raver urged her to let go. Her consciousness fed it, pleased it, sharpened its enjoyment of her violation. But if she lapsed, it would not need exertion to master her. And she would be safe at last--as safe as she had once been in the hospital during the blank weeks after her father's suicide--relieved from excruciation, inured to pain--as safe as death.

There were no other choices left for her to make.

She refused it. With the only passion and strength that remained to her, she refused it.
But extremity and striving made those three moments as long as agony. During them, Linden Avery pitted her ultimate will against her possessor.

She forgave Covenant. He was too poignant and dear to be blamed. He had given everything that her heart could ask of him.

But she did not submit.

Gibbon had said, The principal doom of the Land is upon your shoulders. Because no one else had this chance to come between Covenant and his defeat. You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth. Forged to fail here. Because you can see.

Now she meant to determine what kind of metal had been made of her.

Gibbon-Raver had also told her she was evil. Perhaps that was true. But evil itself was a form of power.

And she had become intimately familiar with her possessor. From the furthest roots of its past, she felt springing its contempt for all things that had flesh and could be mastered--a contempt born of fear. Fear of any form of life able to refuse it. The Forests. Giants. The Haruchai. It was unquenchably hungry for immortal control, for the safety of sovereignty. All refusals terrified it. The logic of its failures led inexorably to death. If it could be refused, then it could also be slain.

She had no way to understand the lost communal mind of the Forests. But Giants and Haruchai were another question. Though moksha Jehannum ripped and shrieked at her, she picked up the strands of what she knew and wove them to her purpose.

The Giants and Haruchai had always been able to refuse. Perhaps because they had not suffered the Land's long history of Ravers, they had not learned to doubt their autonomy. Or perhaps because they used little or no outward expressions of power, they comprehended more fully that true choice was internal. But whatever the explanation, they were proof against possession where the people of the Land were not. They believed in their capacity to make choices which mattered.

That belief was all she needed.

Moksha was frantic now, savage and brutal. It assailed every part of her that was able to feel pain. It desecrated her as if she were Andelain. It made every horrifying memory of her life incandescent before her: Nassic's murder and Gibbon's touch; the lurker of the Sarangrave; Kasreyn's malign cunning; Covenant bleeding irretrievably to death in the woods behind Haven Farm. It poured acid into every wound which futility had ever inflicted upon her.

And it argued with her. She could not choose: she had already made the only choice that signified. When she had accepted the legacy of her father and stuffed it in handsful of tissue down her mother's throat, she had declared her crucial allegiance, her definitive passion--a passion in no way different than her possessor's. Despite had made her what she was, a lost woman as ravaged as the Land, and the Sunbane dawning in her now would never set.

But the sheer intensity of her hurt made her lucid. She saw the Raver's lie. Only once had she tried to master death by destroying life. After that, all her striving had gone to heal those who suffered. Though she had been haunted and afraid, she had not been cruel. Suicide and murder were not the whole story. When the old man on Haven Farm had collapsed in front of her, the stink issuing from his mouth had sickened her like the foretaste of Despite; but she had willingly breathed and breathed that fetor in her efforts to save him.
She refused it. With the only passion and strength that remained to her, she refused it.

But she did not submit.

They believed in their capacity to make choices which mattered.

That belief was all she needed.

After that, all her striving had gone to heal those who suffered. Though she had been haunted and afraid, she had not been cruel. Suicide and murder were not the whole story.

Perhaps this all rings true for me simply because I want it all to be true, that we always have choices to make and can always make choices that matter. Perhaps I believe this because as striving mortals we need this to be true. Either way, this capacity of choice to confront and defeat our inner Despiser(s) has a lot to do with why I find these books so inspiring.
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Post by wayfriend »

Certainly in the story it's true. The thing that the Chronicles is most about is the journey from futility to efficacy. From powerlessness in all its guises, to power in all its forms. In Donaldson's world, inner strength arises from passion. And passion arises from belief. The honest subterfuge of the heart. The one truly human form of power. The myth of the killing stroke. Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever was Thomas Covenant the powerless.

And I guess I believe it, too. :D
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Post by Cord Hurn »

wayfriend wrote:And I guess I believe it, too.
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