Guilt motivates many characters in the Chronicles. Covenant for any number of reasons, Linden towards her parents, Sunder, even Findail’s story of Kastenessen sounds like it’s self-justifying feelings of guilt. Master’s Scar, the first chapter of WGW, could be called a collision of the guilt that two characters feel.
The dromond Starfare’s Gem has left the lost island of the One Tree. Grimmand Honniscrave sits on the deck with his dead brother Cable Seadreamer.
Covenant has withdrawn to his cabin, shattered, recognizing how close he had come to destroying the world in the conflict with the Worm of the World’s End. Also, he is keeping something from Linden. Something he is too afraid to speak of.
Honniscrave, however, soon desires to speak with Covenant in his cabin. Cail tries to dissuade him, but he cannot be dissuaded from his purpose.
He tells Covenant a story of how Seadreamer came to get his scar across his face. Said Honniscrave “The fault of it was mine.” The scar that, Honniscrave fears, brought the Earth-Sight, and its voiceless terror, to his brother. A story of the guilt Honniscrave feels.
In their youth, Honniscrave and Seadreamer were prentice sailors. Among the prentice sailors of the Giants it was the custom to sail a course around the harbor of Home. Honniscrave was older in years, but less mature than his brother, sought glory in being the fastest to sail around the course. Without telling his brother, he tried a maneuver that backfired, the result of which was that a cable came swinging across their boat, striking Seadreamer so hard across the face, that it knocked him into the water, unconscious. Honniscrave had little recollection of the aftermath, believing that he had killed his brother.
He was not killed, but the event scared the Master.
Then Honniscrave tells Covenant his purpose:
This, however, Covenant cannot do. He came too close to destroying the world using the white gold. He can’t trust himself to use the power. He feels his own guilt. Covenant asks Honniscrave, “Are you out of your mind?”“It is the custom of our people to give our dead to the sea. But Cable Seadreamer my brother has met his end in horror, and it will not release him. He is like the dead of the Grieve, damned to his anguish. If his spirit is not given it’s caamora ,” – for an instant his voice broke, “he will haunt me while one stone of the Arch of Time lies on another.”….. “Yet there is no fire in all the world that I can raise to give him surcease. He is a Giant. Even in death he is immune to flame.
Honniscrave replies, revealing his anguish and ending the chapter:
…. “Yes Giantfriend, the epithet held a tinge of sarcasm, “I am gone from my mind. You are the Ring-Wielder, as the Elohim have said. Your power threatens the Earth. What import has the anguish of one or two Giants in such a plight. Forgive me.”