The Mahdoubt

[Jerico]

Huh? Linden would remember it when? It's all the present to Linden. Even when she went to the Lands past it was still her present.

[burgs]

If Linden went into the past and saw Thomas Covenant, then that alters her entire time line - at least that's how I understand the problem of time travel. Her entire life - past and present - would then include a "sighting" of Thomas Covenant, and when she met him in The Wounded Land, she would have remembered it. Peeking into the past changes alters the entirety of your existence.

Even if I'm wrong, which is entirely possible because I admittedly don't have the best mind for the physics of this, we would know if Linden saw Covenant simply because she would have told us. Perhaps I'm off topic. These questions give me headaches.

[abaddon]

I don't think it would affect Linden's whole existence as she is the time traveller. The person it would affect is Thomas Covenant - it would affect the remainder of his existence - i.e. he would have seen Linden before the events of The Wounded Land.

[Jerico]

There trip to the past wasn't before the Wounded Land it was after. Anele wasn't even born at the end of the second series. The time that they traveled back to was about three hundred years after the end of the WGW.
Remember time is severed so it isn't conected any more. Unless there is a major shift in the timeline no one will remember it because it happened in 'severed time' There memories are from 'unsevered time'.
We read the book in Lindens present and it is always her 'present' even when she travels time. If she had seen TC it might have brought down the Arch? But because we don't know exactly what TC became at the end of WGW we can only guess at what might have happened.

Linden seeing herself in the past would have done it also.
She traveled to a time and place she had never been.
We don't have enough information on the ins and outs of SRD mode of time line, or exactly how time is effected by the Ceasures.
They contain all time and are present in none, and time is severed. That is all we really know from the book. SRD in the GI this morning talks about it but just says he knows the rules and how they work

[aliantha]

Time *isn't* severed. Yet. Not completely, anyhow. SRD makes that point several times in the book. Events still follow events in a linear fashion, choices still have consequences, etc. -- as long as you're not inside a ceasure. The ceasures are sort of nipping strands of time here and there -- nibbling away at the Arch of Time, bit by bit -- and if enough bits are nibbled off, the Arch will fall and the world will end. But that hasn't happened yet.

The rest of this time travel stuff just makes my head hurt.

[Jerico]

The part where Linden is inside the Ceasure we see what is being done to Time. The book says that the Ceasures Sever time. The Skest are destroying parts of time, Lindens sees them doing it. She also sees that it will take hundreds of years to bring down the Arch, but it will come down.
I see it more like fractured time, still holding together but fractured into bits and pieces like you said.

[burgs]

Mine too.

I was thinking about it this morning, and I have to retract what I said earlier. Linden time travelled, saw the Land, saw the Demondim, but that didn't change anything with regard to the Second Chronicles. The Land was absolutely new to her. So traveling back in time, apparently, doesn't alter the entirety of one's existence.

Sigh. I hate being wrong. It just seems to happen so often!

[Khat]

I thought I was alone in my thoughts about the Mahdoubt. I find it surprising that SRD planned it that way - maybe to give us a kick in our memory centers of our brains?

I also think of the forestals, giant lore, or hidden powers cloaked in a multitude of colors. She may be more or she maybe just odd - but her mystery - as well as the overal feeling she provides does mean something. She is both contradiction and balance...

[The Leper Messiah]

Having just read every bit of this thread, and as the mahdoubt was one of the main reasons I came here, I think I will just say WOW

Some fantastic thoughts and ideas here. I dont have anything new to add just some 'first impressions' which can be insightfull after all the thinking and re-thinking. My first impression was that the 'real' mahdoubt wasnt a woman. That her apearance was a disguise. I wondered if she/he was TC or the Creator. I like Wayfriends theory. It seems closest to my own ideas. Or Could the creator have found a way through, a way that is veiled.

I would like to know: how long has she been at Revelstone? Do the Harachai just accept her or do they co-exist despite each other? Was she the same way with the others as she was with linden? Or was she more familiar with linden? Did she in fact know Linden?

I think that the mahdoubt would be doing exactly what she is doing no matter who was in charge at Revelstone. Is she waiting?

I know I have raised more questions but you guys seem to be pretty good at finding answers. I would like to hear your thoughts.

cheers (from a newbie)

[wayfriend]

Following the same thory of mine: If the Haurchai have an inkling that the TC riding up to Revelstone is not the real TC (hence, "stranger"), then they may have an inkling about who the Mahdoubt is as well (but I can here them say, "We do not know ..."). Hence the unquestioning acceptance. Whom else have the ever accepted unquestioningly since Kevin?

[MrKABC]

I remember seeing somewhere in this thread references to the Mahdoubt possibly being a creature like Amok.

If so, the Haruchai would tolerate the Mahdoubt just like they trusted Amok in the first Chronicles.

I don't believe the Mahdoubt is a croyel or other ill being, since the Haruchai have better developed health sense than Linden and would have picked up on the presence (IMHO)...

Cryptic reference to the robe - I wonder what it means.

[wayfriend]

I remember seeing somewhere in this thread references to the Mahdoubt possibly being a creature like Amok.

Ah, good point. One thing I believe is that the Haruchai suspect she is something which they accept without question. The fact that the Mahdoubt appears to be a mask or illusory aspect of some sort implies that the Haruchai know something about what is behind it. For whatever reason this mysterious entity is residing in Revelstone, the Haruai are pleased to oblige him/her. If the M.E. is in fact hiding, the Haruchai are not giving him/her away.

[Dr. Tewari]

I think she's the Creator, you know the beggar that appeared to Covenant before in the other chronicles.

[MrKABC]

I think she's the Creator, you know the beggar that appeared to Covenant before in the other chronicles.

I must respectfully disagree - it has been stressed many, many times that the Creator could not reach through the Arch of Time to help the people of the Land, directly or indirectly. For the Mahdoubt to be the Creator would violate the Law of the first 6 books!

We'll see in 2007 or so...

[ceallaighq]

At first, I thought she was a female Haruchai. Wrong! We'd better get to meet some or I refuse to re-read these books.

[Borillar]

Here's another possibility: what about the Appointed of the Elohim that used to be the Colossus of the Fall? In TWL Covenant has the soothtell, where he learns that "the Sunbane had destroyed the forests, unbinding the will of wood which had upheld for millenia that stone monolith".

Well, if not, then the Mahdoubt is Lord Amatin. No, the Lurker. No, Hyranil of the Ranyhyn. No, ....

[MrKABC]

Well, if not, then the Mahdoubt is Lord Amatin.

HAHAHAHAAAA!!! She's put a few pounds on that "thin, waifish frame"

Hey, BTW, how did someone with her physical description pass the tests of the Sword and the Staff anyway?????

[Creator]

Here's another possibility: what about the Appointed of the Elohim that used to be the Colossus of the Fall? In TWL Covenant has the soothtell, where he learns that "the Sunbane had destroyed the forests, unbinding the will of wood which had upheld for millenia that stone monolith".

I like this thought!!

[Jerico]

Maybe she is appointed to protect Revelstone itself?

[Steve Hurtloam]

Does the name "Mahdoubt" mean anything to anyone? Such an odd name.