Runes PT 2 Ch 5 Against Time.

[drew]

..Whoa; I almost didn't get this thing done. I had Lost my copy of Runes in some big office building downtown that I was delivering to one day; and I didn't even know where to START looking for it.
Anyways, I got onto the elevator, and the Muzak was like ear splitting torture! And the Flouresent lights were flickering so bad, I thought I was going to fall into an epileptic fit.
The elevator kept going up and down, never stopping at any of the floors, so how was I to get off at the right floor, when I didn't even know where my book was?
Then I remembered the new girl working for the dispatcher(or I least I think shes working forthe dispatcher); she's so stressed out at her desk, half the time she doesn't even know what's going on, I was able to however, get her to call some customers me, and eventually one of them told me (through her) where my book was.
I was able to stop the elevator on the right floor...what a relief.

Anyways, to the chapter.
It's a difficult chapter, and the TOOLAH members must not like the fact that it takes place entirely in LInden's Mind.
What can you say about a chapter that has all of One word of dialoge?
So it begins with Linden et al heading into a ceasure at their own free will.
Let's look at the first line:

In an instant, formication became the world.

Formication: The sensation of ants crawling all over your body. And he uses the word Five more times in the next seven pages.
Why?
Well, this is why I love Donaldson's writting, most pepople complained about the usage of that word: formication. It doesn't roll off the tongue very well, and sounds gross. Well I imagine that reading it over and over again was the author's best way to make us feel what Linden and the others were actually feeling. Formication as a word gets into your head and irritates you...just like life inside of a ceasure.

Linden feels that though she is moving onward, she's moving onward in No Time The pain and cold and whiteness and lonliness were unbearable. At one point she notices,

She could feel the cold stab like a krill through the bullet hole in her shirt

.

Intereseting choice there. The Krill..something of the Land's past. Is this a reminder that we are travelling through time? Or is it some foreshadowing to what we are going to see in the future?
Both??

Once the initial shock of being inside the formic ceasure wore off, Linden begins to see how time in the Land (really the Land's Earth) is represented:

The raw damaged rocks before her appeared to be chunks of time...They were badly battered, torn from their natiral union with each other by violence or lunacy. Yet they were intact themselves...

So basically, time is damaged. The rocks of the Land's time are being blasted, but they are still there. Damaged; but still there.

Next she sees some mishapen being. Acid like creatures. Beings of the Illearth Stone. The Skest. She remembers them from her Quest to the One tree, how they had served the Lurker of the Sarangrave.
**Note ..more connections to the Lands history here..The skest... the Lurker... the Quest... it's like we're in a time machine or something.**

Then things start to get a little strange. The skest seem like they are serving her. Even though she is ridding through a ceasure on the back of a Ranyhyn, she's also standing among these broken chunks of time, being served by the acid children.

All simultaneous, overlapping around her and within her as though they occupied the same space at the same time. If the ceasure took other forms as well, they lay beyond the reach of her senses

.

More insight into the inner workings of a ceasure. She is in more than one place at once...more than one Time at once. She's even more than one Person at once.

She was feeling all of the pain of being in a ceasure, yet she also started to feel a new pain, as she beat her fist against her temple and felt the blood weep down her skull. It's clear to Linden now, the she is seeing things through Joan's eyes, and that Joan is is being Ravered by Turiya Herem.

Goaded by Herem's malice, Joan continued to strike herself, measuring out her despair against her temple. And with each blow, her power lashed out to create Falls, shattering coherent fragments of time until every moment within that fragment was torn apart.

To ease the readers' suffering over the Land's demise, the author adds this little bit of helpfull information:

Gauged by the scale of Joan's blasts, the wasteland around her was immense. The Earth might endure and suffer for centuries before the damage became irrecoverable

So the ceasures are bad. Really REALLY bad. But they can be stopped. And though their damage is permanent, they still have a long ways to go before the damage is so great, that there's no point in trying tostop them.

Good News.

Now at this Point, Linden's whole life is trapped in the ceasure, she starts to remember everything..everything bad in her life.

Watching her father's suicide. Imprisoned at Revelstone. Possed by a Raver while Covenant surrendered to Lord Foul.

Just like your entire life flashing before your eyes when you're dying..is this a clue that she will die before the end? Or is it just more hints that we are travelling through time?
Both??

Despair began to ravage her.

She might spend eternity looking for an escape...Linden needed to do more than simply endure until the ceasure cast her out...She needed to swin against the current...
She needed wil magic

But of course she could not summon it. She can only use wild magic for things like sewing eharts back together..not for blasting out of time machines.
She was not in charge of this things..but she knew who was:
Joan.
Of course..in the past she used Covenant's ring through him. Now she would have to use her/his ring's mate through it's owner.

Riding the force of her own anguish and empathy, Linden turned her heart to the pitch of Joan's madness...Lord Fould preached despair. But Linden Avery the Chosen was not helpless.

AS she summoned her companions, she could sense a change not only in the ceasure but in Joan as well. There began a blackness mixed in with the silver argence of Joan's blasts.
One by one, she noticed her companions, and how affected they were by the ceasure.
Anele..he seemed okay.
Liand looked as if his back had been broken.
Stave, was unaffected, while the Ramen were badly affected.

Stave held himself stolidly erecet, impassove as stone...Mahtiir's gasping sounded like a splash of blood. Pain crippled his cords.

WEll now, turiya is getting deparate, and tries his damndest to get Joan back on track. He multiplied her torment, JOan's power had turned to blackness...and then the ur-viles apeared, and their own blackness filled the whiteness of the ceasure.

Can I just take a minute here to say ho much I like this image?
In most fantasy, when good is battleing evil, there is a color was, usually of Blue vs Green, or white vs red.
Here, it is black fighting black on a field of white...it makes it kind of difficult to know who really won doesn't it?

Well, the Ranyhyn, as usual, save the day..the now see their destination and are able to trot right through the wall of the ceasure...surging into the teeth of the formication..here the pain is more like hornets rather than ants..Yuck!!

Then the migrane aura of the Fall parted in either side of her, and she and her companions ran onto solid earth under a bright sky as though they had beem spit out from the belly of Hell's own leviathan.

So what do we learn from this Chapter?
We learn a little more about how a ceasure works;
We certainly see who is controlling them.
We are reminded of Linden's limits on rousing wild magic on her own.
And as a nice Fellowship of the Ring moment...we see that Linden needs her comapnions for aid...she can no go it alone, even if she wanted to.

All in all, a different sort of chapter, but formically well written and very important to the story.

[dlbpharmd]

Great dissection, Drew! Thanks!

Formication. I remember reading ROTE for the first time and coming across that word, and thinking WTF?! I practically ran to find a dictionary.

A few months ago, a really good friend of mine told me about an adverse reaction to a medication that she had, that she described as "bugs crawling on her skin." I laughed and told her what the official word for that sensation was. Now when I see her, I ask "Been formicating lately?"

It's really interesting to see how Joan is being tortured by Herem, and one can't help but wonder if somehow she was under the Raver's influence prior to coming to the Land. Personally, I don't see how she wasn't.

[Relayer]

...and I didn't even know where to START looking for it.
Anyways, I got onto the elevator, and the Muzak was like ear splitting torture! And the Flouresent lights were flickering so bad, I thought I was going to fall into an epileptic fit.
The elevator kept going up and down, never stopping at any of the floors, so how was I to get off at the right floor, when I didn't even know where my book was?

Damn dude, sounds like you were caught in a caesure!! How appropriate!!

Linden feels that though she is moving onward, she's moving onward in No Time The pain and cold and whiteness and lonliness were unbearable. At one point she notices,

She could feel the cold stab like a krill through the bullet hole in her shirt

.
Intereseting choice there. The Krill..something of the Land's past. Is this a reminder that we are travelling through time? Or is it some foreshadowing to what we are going to see in the future?
Both??

I noticed that too. And it's not "The Krill" -- it's "a krill." There's only one meaning I know of for that word (outside these books), so it must be there intentionally. Otherwise, she feels like she's being stabbed by a tiny shrimp

It's also interesting how SRD describes the caesure in very similar terms to Linden's experience with the Elohim, but of course in the caesure it's exceedingly painful (thanks Fist for posting this in the One Tree thread where it caught my attention):

"Where are we going?"
"Going?" replied Daphin lightly. "We are not 'going' at all. We merely walk." When Linden stared at her, she continued, "This is Elemesnedene itself. Here there is no other 'where' to which we might go."

Deliberately, Linden exaggerated her surface incomprehension. "There has to be. We're moving. My friends are somewhere else. How will we get back to them? How will we find that Elohimfest Chant mentioned?"

"Ah, Sun-Sage," Daphin chuckled. Her laugh sounded like a moonrise in this place which had neither moon nor sun. "In Elemesnedene all ways are one. We will meet with your companions when that meeting has ripened. And there will be no need to seek the place of the Elohimfest. It will be held at the center, and in Elemesnedene all places are the center. We walk from the center to the center, and where we now walk is also the center."

So this sense of no direction, no time, no space has come up in different contexts. In Elemesnedene, it seems all things are "in the flow"... in a fall, all things are chaotic. It could prove important in the future.

Then the migrane aura of the Fall parted in either side of her, and she and her companions ran onto solid earth under a bright sky as though they had beem spit out from the belly of Hell's own leviathan.

This is an interesting metaphor, recalling both the biblical Jonah's whale and more relevantly, the Worm. And unbridled use of white gold will wake the Worm... Could caesures be like localized instances of the existence of the Worm? Or put the other way, the Worm manifests itself as a universal archtype of a caesure. Complete timeless chaos.

The dimensionless whiteness description also makes me think of the "construct" from the Matrix. Which may not be so far off... without time or space, what is left but cold and blankness? The Landverse was created to be located "somewhere" dimensionally. Maybe this is how the Worm/caesure/leviathan/Arch metaphor is conceptually tied together.

This is a fairly short chapter (at least it seems so on CD), and as you said, nothing happens. SRD himself keeps telling us this... "no time had passed" ...

What's the significance of Anele appearing to her? Or at least that she thinks he does? Is it simply her mind's way of getting her attention, to focus on the task of getting out? Or is there more to it?

[Usivius]

wow. great posting drew and great insights Relayer. Little bits that add to my thoughts. Excellent.

One thing struck me in that chapter:

It's really interesting to see how Joan is being tortured by Herem, and one can't help but wonder if somehow she was under the Raver's influence prior to coming to the Land.

Totally! I am sure she was! And as my mind drifts and allows itself to imagine what absolute horror Joan must be going through, I shudder and become ill. To me it's like a bully torturing a child. There is no defence from it in Joan's case. She succumbed to despair and the raver has been torturing her endlessly for --- how long?--- a couple years?... man, that's sick...

[wayfriend]

Hey drew! Finally made it. And I'm glad you found your Runes, eh?

Good disection. It touches on everything I want to....

Before I reply to these posts, I want to mention, at the very end of the last chapter, Linden thinks, "If Joan were indeed the cause of the caesures, then entering one might resemble being plunged into her madness." How true this turns out to be. Do we chalk this up to Linden's intuition?

At one point she notices,

She could feel the cold stab like a krill through the bullet hole in her shirt

. Interesting choice there.

Yes, very interesting. I cannot help but think of The Law of Going Out Like You Came In. Linden is going to be stabbed, to match her bullet wound.

This is a prophecy. She is in a ceasure, and has access to all times; and so, a prophecy.

The raw damaged rocks before her appeared to be chunks of time...They were badly battered, torn from their natiral union with each other by violence or lunacy. Yet they were intact themselves...

Okay, here's something that gets Wayfriend gibbering. An Arch of Time metaphor. Nerdanel, get over here!

The Broken Wall. A metaphor for the Arch of Time, like the Wounded Rainbow and the Worm. A long curving object. The sea, chaos, with the blocks opposing. Once they had formed a buttress against the sea, an assertion of structure and endurance in the teeth of the surging waves. The Broken Wall is a barrier against chaos, allowing structure to be. The Broken Wall is preserving the Earth. And it is chunks of time ... a Wall of Time.

Gotta love Arch metaphors.

The Wounded Rainbow is the Arch guilt-ridden, the Worm is the Arch rampant, and the Broken Wall is the Arch endangered.

But the question is, is the Broken Wall nonetheless a real place? Or is Linden somehow having a vision which shows a metaphor as if it was real? I'm going with 'vision of metaphor' here.

Next she sees some mishapen being. Acid like creatures. Beings of the Illearth Stone. The Skest.

Ah, yes, the skest. If the Broken Wall is a metaphor, what do the skest represent?

Skest. Pawns of the Lurker. Servants of Evil. Servants of Evil roam the Broken Wall as if they own it, caring for those who are washed up there. I'm not sure what this conveys as a metaphor, but it doesn't sound good!

It's clear to Linden now, the she is seeing things through Joan's eyes, and that Joan is is being Ravered by Turiya Herem.

Yes. A vision in which she can be "in" Joan's head, see through Joan's eyes.

I want to point out that, once again, we have a vision with a remarkable similarity to earlier visions. The summoning visions. And the horserite visions. Visions in which she is someone else, experiencing their pain.

The Ranyhyn gave the horserite visions. Did they give these? Are they doing more in this ceasure than guiding Linden through Time? Are they guiding her in other ways?

Or does everyone who walks into a ceasure get a free trip into Joan's head?

If these visions really are similar, then we can expect strange transpositions. We have some: we know that the blows to the Wall and the ceasures are somehow one and the same. And Linden is also Joan at the same time.

She needed wild magic

But of course she could not summon it.

At this point, I say, of course not - she did not first think of Jeremiah! When will she catch on? Passion, Linden; Passion!

Of course..in the past she used Covenant's ring through him. Now she would have to use her/his ring's mate through it's owner.

Right. Here is where, it is a vision of a metaphor, falls apart. If it is a vision, how can Linden really access Joan's white gold?

WEll now, turiya is getting deparate, and tries his damndest to get Joan back on track. He multiplied her torment, JOan's power had turned to blackness...

Other things aside ... Yikes! Wild Magic Turning Black!

Venom?!?!?!?!

What if Joan's condition is the result of a Raver AND venom? Venom is a moral poison, it undermines restraint, cripples principal, unleashes unchecked passion. In Joan ... it would cause her self-hatred to run rampant, to grow beyond bounds. And allow her to access wild magic with limitless power.

Remember, if Covenant had not been envenomed, the wild magic would never have been powerful enough to damage the Arch. Lacking the venom, you would be too small to threaten him. ... the venom which gives you such might.

Could Joan be powerful enough to create ceasures and weaken the Arch without venom? Covenant was not.

What's the significance of Anele appearing to her? Or at least that she thinks he does? Is it simply her mind's way of getting her attention, to focus on the task of getting out? Or is there more to it?

Was it really Anele, or a vision? A strange transposition?

It's really interesting to see how Joan is being tortured by Herem, and one can't help but wonder if somehow she was under the Raver's influence prior to coming to the Land.

Totally! I am sure she was.

Me too. In "I am content", Linden clearly sees that Joan has been possessed.

[Avatar]

Great post WayFriend. Especially like the bit about the "prophecy." Never thought of it that way.

--A

[dlbpharmd]

Good post, WF.

How is it that I missed that the skest were created by the Illearth Stone? So, they were created in First Chronicles? How is it that they've been able to sustain themselves for over 7000 years?

Wayfriend wrote:

What if Joan's condition is the result of a Raver AND venom? Venom is a moral poison, it undermines restraint, cripples principal, unleashes unchecked passion. In Joan ... it would cause her self-hatred to run rampant, to grow beyond bounds. And allow her to access wild magic with limitless power.

Interesting thought, do you think she was envenomed prior to coming to the Land?

[Tulizar]

..Intereseting choice there. The Krill..something of the Land's past. Is this a reminder that we are travelling through time? Or is it some foreshadowing to what we are going to see in the future?
Both??

I liked the references to things of the Land's past. I agree, mentioning the krill seems to underline the fact that the Caesure is a means of travelling through time.

Although the skest and turiya Herem are in Joan's mind, the mere mention of these creatures are links to Linden's experiences in the Land. They conjure up images of the Land's past, skillfully making it clear that the Caesure is both Joan's madness and Linden's means of accessing the past.


I love how Linden's experience in the Caesure is possibly similar to Joan's existence in the real world. In the Caesure, Linden's

...loneliness was complete. It seemed less bearable than pain. She could have wailed forever and gone unheard.

This is how I imagined Joan's life in the hospital. Surrounded by people, silently screaming for help. It just seemed like a sublte way for SRD to reinforce the point that Linden's experience in the Caesure was complements of Joan's ravaged mind.

[wayfriend]

I don't remember skest being created by the Illearth Stone.

[I'm Murrin]

Nah. They were part of the Sarangrave, animated by the sunbane and controlled by the Lurker. They just happened to be green (a different kind of green to the Illearth colour, IIRC).

[dlbpharmd]

I don't think they were.

[Warmark]

I don't remember skest being created by the Illearth Stone.

Perhaps the jherrin (sp? ) Were. We know they were the result of LF's experiments so the Illearth Stone could have been involved.

[Usivius]

Or does everyone who walks into a ceasure get a free trip into Joan's head?

Very interesting point. I don't have my book with me at work, however it would definately be expected the first time... an existing caesure was summoned to their location. However, the second time, Linden made one, didn't she? And so with that reasoning, wouldn't everone who travels through it have a "free trip into" Linden's head?....

Hmmm.... someone quick! I need a book!

[wayfriend]

And so with that reasoning, wouldn't everone who travels through it have a "free trip into" Linden's head?....

And if so, how do we get Jay a ticket?

[Usivius]

D'OH!

[Zarathustra]

I'm slowly catching up.

Drew, that was a funny joke about losing your book! I liked the elevator/ceasure, and the new girl/Anele! Good job. And the rest of your post was insightful, too. I believe you're right about the overuse of "formication." It bothered me more with each repetition. Strange that a word can have such power.

I didn't really enjoy this chapter. I was bothered by the paradox of no time passing, and yet Linden can still act, still think. Donaldson does a decent job of making this paradox explicit--as good a job as one can do when you have no other choice but to place one word after another. Words must come linearly, even when you're writing about nonlinear time. While I didn't find it entirely convincing (I'm not sure any explication would have been satisfying), he made an admirable attempt at showing the simultaneity of her consciousness with the several "avatars" of the caesure.

Relayer, interesting point about the Elemesnedene. While that is a spatial "distortion," the caesure is a temporal one. In both cases, there is disorientation.

Wayfriend, I don't think it's necessary to introduce venom into the equation. I thought the blackness was simply the urviles protecting them, helping Linden. She did say they wouldn't have survived without their help. If this blackness was not that help, then there is no other evidence of their invovlement.

Your "prophesy" interpretation of the krill/bullet hole was very interesting. That did not occur to me.

And I, too, found it significant that she "entered" Joan's mind when she entered the caesure--though I view it differently. In fact, I think this transposition of identities during times of transition either to the Land or through the Land's fundamental structure (time) is the most revealing aspect of this chapter. When she entered the caesure, I believe, she has literally entered Joan's mind, Joan's madness. As you know, I believe the Land is a shared, intersubjective myth world where archetypes of human consciousness are externalized. So what does it mean to inhabit a shared myth world when one of the people you're sharing it with is crazy? It means you have things like caesures floating around. Joan's madness itself threatens the integrity of this shared intersubjective world.

It's not coincidence that when Joan hits her head, she destroys bits of time and creates caesures. Donaldson didn't have her slap herself in the face, or beat upon her chest. She strikes at the seat of her own consciousness.

You rightly noted similar transpositions of identity during the summoning, the horserite, and this caesure. During these times of heightened consciousness, Linden is getting a glimpse of the true nature of the Land. Donaldson is giving us a peek into the Land's foundational structure as a shared "illusion." Or a shared "reality." Which ever you chose. At these times of transcendental consciusness, she is like Neo seeing the numbers, the substrate of this world's being. And that substrate always involves transpositions of identity.

It's a common theme throughout this book. We keep seeing Covenant (and others) in Anele. Ravers possess different people. Linden enters into people's heads. Identity itself is something as malleable as all the other structures of this world (time, life, death). And those structures are starting to break down. Donaldson is allowing us to see the joints where this world fits together, because he's showing us where those joints are starting to loosen. These are not mere visions--or rather, they are visions of the fundamental structures of his invented world. He's tearing apart his own metaphor, and letting us see both where it breaks down and where it is the most real!

But the question is, is the Broken Wall nonetheless a real place? Or is Linden somehow having a vision which shows a metaphor as if it was real? I'm going with 'vision of metaphor' here.

I believe this applies to the entire Land. A vision which shows a metaphor as if it was real. That, to me, is the most significant thing about this chapter.