Please, if this is purely a part of History just to incorporate Berek, then I must ask you to excuse my incomprehension. I am still trying to understand most of the History.
Atiaran Trell-mate tales us a Legend early in the first Chronicles (unsure of the page number):
My question - simple or not, I am not totally sure; hypothetically or factually (whichever suits best for a fictitious tale such as TCTC), by SRD's knowledge or explanation: If the Land is Covenant's psyche in parallel, as explained repeatedly by SRD (in both interviews and his essays), then what would have caused the event of the King and Queen's peril?"It came to pass that there was a great war in the eldest days. Before the Old Lords were born, before the Giants came across the Sunbirth Sea – a time before the Oath of Peace, before the Desecration and High Lord Kevin’s last battle.
In this time, the Land was one great nation, and over it ruled a King and Queen. They were rich with love and honor, and for many years they ruled in unison and peace.
But after a time a shadow came over the heart of the King. He tasted the power of life and death over those who served him, and learned to desire it. Soon mastery became a lust with him. His nights were spent in dark quests for more power, and by day he exercised that power, becoming hungrier and more cruel as the lust overcame him.
But the Queen looked on her husband and was dismayed. She had no desire to share in his dark desires which now ruled him. And no appeal or power of hers could break the grip of cruelty that degraded the King. And at last, when she saw that the good of the Land would die if her husband were not halted, she broke with him, opposed his might with hers.
Then there was war in the Land. Many who hated murder and loved life joined the Queen’s side. The chiefest of these was Berek – the strongest and wisest of the Queen’s champions. But the fear of the King was upon the Land, and whole cities rose up to fight for him, killing to protect their own slavery.
For a time it seemed that the Queen’s forces would prevail, for her heroes were mighty of hand, none mightier than Berek, who was said to be a match for any King.
But as the battle raged, a shadow, a grey cloud from the east, fell over the hosts. The Queen’s defenders were stricken at heart, and their strength left them. But her enemies found a power of madness in the shadow. They forgot their humanity – and they chopped and trampled and clawed and maimed and defiled until their grey onslaught overwhelmed the heroes, and Berek’s comrades broke one by one into despair and death. And so the battle went until Berek was the last of the Queen’s defenders left to oppose the shadow’s hordes.
But he fought on, heedless of his fate and the number of his foes. At last the King himself, filled with the fear and madness of the shadow, challenged Berek, and they fought.
Berek stroked mightily, but the shadow turned his blade. The contest was balanced until one blow of the King’s ax cleft Berek’s hand. Then Berek’s sword fell to the ground, and he looked and saw the shadow, and all his brave comrades dead. He cried a great cry of despair, and fled the battleground. Thus he ran, hunted by death. For three days he ran, never stopping, and for three days the King’s host came upon him, murderous for blood. At the last of his strength and his despair, he came to Mount Thunder.
Climbing the slope, he threw himself down atop a great boulder and wept, saying, “Alas for the Earth. We are overthrown, and have no friends to redeem us. Beauty shall pass utterly from the Land.”
But the rock on which he lay replied, “There is a Friend for a heart with the wisdom to see it.”
Berek cried, “The stones are not my friends. See, my enemies ride the Land, and no tremor tears the Earth from under their foul feet.”
“They are alive as much as you, and need the ground to stand upon,” said the rock. “Yet there is a Friend for you in the Earth, if you will pledge your soul to its healing.”
Then Berek stood upon the rock, and beheld his enemies close upon him. He took the pledge, sealing it with the blood of his riven hand. The Earth replied with thunder; and from the heights of the mountain came great stone Fire-Lions, devouring everything in their path. The King and all his host were laid waste, and Berek alone stood above the rampage on his boulder.
When the rampage had passed, Berek promised respect and communion and service for the Earth from himself and all the generations which followed him upon the Land. Wielding the first Earthpower, he made the Staff of Law from the wood of the One Tree, and with it began the healing of the Land. In time Berek Halfhand became the Lord-Fatherer, the first of the Old Lords. Those who followed his path flourished in the Land for two thousand years."
Kevin imperiled the Earth a thousand years (two years) before Covenant sojourned to the Land [I'm assuming the desecration is when he was sweeped up by the Leprosarium? and those months following were the Land's resting period (where it was renewed from destruction, etc?)] and Berek a thousand or so years before (I would have assumed, due to the length of life the Lords obtain, as well as the many decendants of Berek - or those taking his place, I can never remember - ending with Kevin).
Again, would anyone have any idea what would have caused the tiny scuffle between King and Queen in the Land's history paralleled with Covenant?
