Linden has obtained contentedness after a hurly-burly of adventures shaking the foundations of the entire existence. Thus has the author sunk the armada of a certain flagitious fan cult, and at least during the course of this chapter the flailing accusers cannot discover so much as a twig to support them: she does not whine, she does not brood, ‘tis a whole new revolutionary mood! Since when have we beheld the angsty doctor muffling titters akin to some tipsy teenager? Eons, eons agone in Andelain after espying overenthusiastic Giants playacting sword-sheathing behind every bush large enough to hide a tractor, and of course when she hugger-mugger emptied Grueburn’s hipflask of emergency diamondraught, and as a result witnessed a fleet of airborne unicorns farting rainbows. But the latter is a story for another night...
Love suits them both, delivering traits that on a regular day skulk beneath strata of condensed self-accusation and unworth. In a sense the keener reader can exhale a puff of easement at this development. On another level, we are witnessing a crucial progress-step along an ongoing transformation: the anti-heroes shed their soiled plumage bit by bit, ascending towards a godhood--mayhap a demi-such--to join into an eventual trinity. One must observe that this concept does not inherently attach itself to christianity, even if readers oft descry definite Biblical themes within the narrative. Many ancient religions, such as the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, even Norse sported tripartite deities. The Egyptian Isis (mother)-Osiris (father)-Horus (son) corresponds to this specimen better than the most common example.This sensation that he [Thomas] had vindicated her, body and soul, was more profound than her fatigue. It felt numinous and ineffable: a homecoming of the spirit. Every part of him had become as precious to her as a sunrise.
Melodies gemmed the leaves overhead as if they had been set in place to watch over her and Covenant.
Groaning softly, Covenant blinked his eyes open. When his gaze found Linden, he tried to smile: an awkward twist of his mouth. In the delicate light of the Forestal’s music, the pale scar on his forehead seemed to glow. It might have been a nascent anadem, and old wound that was slowly becoming a crown.
Here we can list qualities that complement one another: Time and Creation - Healing and Love - Structure and Dimensions, or an aspected Water (Linden) - Earth (Jeremiah) - Fire (Covenant). In the ancient Indo-European cultures, mortal destiny was commonly depicted as a tightbound triple. If we apply the concept to the Chronicles, it grants a whole new meaning to the Swordmainnir bearing the fate of the Earth in their arms while running from hazard to jeopardy. Another Norse mythology allusion peeks from behind a mossy boulder here: the Wyrds upon those cold shores are Jötunheimish Giantesses.
While the wretches from the worlds beyond the Arch of Time indeed do not view themselves as aught transcendental, one must recall that the Haruchai yet worship Covenant, and that even the Giants revere these beings outliving their mighty millennia. As cliché as it might clang, they furthermore gain new markings along the way. The leper messiah’s ancient headwound, now an allegorical crown, bleeds argence. Caer-Caveral’s pine-scented super-detergent annihilated the bloody grass stains from Linden’s jeans. Ooh, what shall befall to the still somewhat confused cub? Will the much-depicted, begrimed horsies gain sentience and become a new brood of Jerehyn?
Ere we bounce back into the bower, let us track back a soupcon of pages and peek at other mythological imports. The treewarder of Ragnarökkr revealed that his plant was a willow. This tree is associated with water and sorceries involved with the element. The author has several times remarked upon Linden’s fate being writ in water; an apt connection here. Out of the thickets, a wild music connection prances forth as well. The wood was a popular material for the sound boxes of harps, and the famous Orpheus received his, well, orphic skills from the tree itself by carrying such branches in the mystic confines of the underworlds. Thus do the poets hallow the willow. In Ye Oldendays, some Baltic Finns believed that Vanemuine or Väinämöinen sang the flora into existence from the gray soil with his runesongs and the aid of his magical kannel.
One of the major symbolisms of the willow pertains to fertility. While Caerwood’s bower--or more akin to a holy grove, hörgr, hiisi--blows into the cooling ashes of hope, Linden and Covenant’s union and the subsequent lovemaking cement the possibility of new vitality. In the Norse mythology, a duo of humans hight Líf (life) and Lífþrasir (lover of life) survive the Twilight of the Gods by hiding within the World Tree, and revitalise the existence of their race ensuing the recreation of the Nine Worlds. Personally I was able to guess the outcome of the entire tome based on folklore parallels, and I must animadvert that this holy tree-husband-wife-triangle reaffirmed my expectations during the first read. Moreover, the realms of Nordic gods and mortals share the same cyclical feature. A few additional clues may crouch behind the very character names. Linden, as even a lobotomized starfish with a botany book at his or her disposal would ken, is a type of tree. Embodying love and fertility both in Germanic and East Baltic cultures, for instance Estonian women worshiped this vegetative form of THOOLAH’s ire. The etymology remains irresolute, but linden and lund (holy grove) may sprout from the same root. Readers can tie together the meaning of this bundle of conceptions.
The willow’s luxuriance has germinated even more legends over the millennia, one of which concerns serpents, these winsome wrigglers the cousin of which contrives to gobble the Land. While in ancient Greece branches of thereof were stuck into the beds of barren women to coax serpents to squirm aboard (phallic symbolism), this belief was eventually capsized and thereafter the tree became a protection against serpents. Later during the chapter, we shall discover that the author has handpicked his mythofigures.
One final espial about Mahrtiir: In all sooth, the name reads “martyr”. In a fashion, he surrendered his sight to gain puissant, eldritch lore and his “heart’s desire” during the succeeding transformation. Óðinn purchased the right to drink the mead of wisdom by tossing a single eyeball into the jötunn Mímir’s well. What the well did with this optic oddment still mystifies audiences. Or did Mímir mayhap fish out the treat and enjoy it together with pickled onions?
Well, let us leave the jötunn to his singular fancies and return to ex-Mahrtiir’s micro-paradise. The company has reached a much-required respite from the turmoils of the eschaton. Now Linden and Covenant clamber out of their cuddlyburrow to greet the others. Along the way, she observes that the hubby’s health has deteriorated, yet akin to the haruheads, he refuses a healing, reiterating his necessity for numbness. Why do you think this is so important to him?
Upon sighting the coo-coo pigeons, the Giantesses beam with friskiness and restored energies, but Jeremiah...a hodgepodge of jarring desires that strikes her health-sense akin to a kitten being flayed. During the fane-fashioning, incremental improvements illuminated the priorly black chasms of his mind, but now it appears that most such light has been extinguished.
Linden wishes to tunnel her way into the kernel of his agitation, but briefly the mirthful Swordmainnir claim her attention. Something in Coldspray’s cheer struck me as interesting:The emotions clenched inside him showed in his aura. He could smile because she had come back for him, and because she and Covenant were finally united--and because he had been able to sleep. But the effects of Kastenessen’s possession persisted: he did not know how to relieve them. And he had accomplished his one purpose. In the aftermath, he had lost the eagerness of his talent, the excitement which had driven and protected him.
The Giants cannot envy or feel scorn, can they? In spite of an underlying somberness revealed in Kindwind’s deep-digging sagacity about all endeavor equaling dust and Honninscrave’s grim-manliness, a geysir of grumbles about the bloody humans humping one another while her foolish kin toils ooon and ooon beneath the fraying skies does not erupt from the Ironhand’s lips.“To behold you and Linden Giantfriend as you are does not test my heart. It gives only joy.”
The adventurers ascertain that an hour must lapse ere Jörmungandr shall bounce to feast on the flesh of the Land: plenty of time for some mother-son bonding, and hopefully a morsel of enlightening chat about screws and nuts and the functionality of the masculine toolkit as well, so that Giantish jests would unfold their significance. Furthermore it seems that Branl and Stave have decided to reconnect their mindlink. Behold, a proper humbling has bechanced!
In any event, Linden and Jeremiah must talk.
Jeremiah’s temple, where Linden leads the lad, resembles his psyche. If in dreamscenes the house reflects the self, then indeed the author has constructed an apt likeness.As far as she knew, a sense of purpose was all that had defended him against the cost of his emotional wounds. Now he had nothing to build--and perhaps nothing to hope for.
If so, she knew that feeling. But she had her faith in Covenant to steady her. And long ago, she had been assured, You will not fail--She wanted to share those gifts with Jeremiah if she could. They were better than despair.
The mama bear wishes to teach her cub a lesson about the meaning of secrets and trust. She shoves herself on his level to prove they both shiver in the same sinking ship; in fact, Covenant would huddle in the aft, even if Linden chooses to regard his determination unvanquishable and capacity unfathomable. By rousing the Worm, she introduced the Lindämmerung upon the Earth. She is neither a goddess unerring nor a mighty dís capable of weaving all fates into a perfect tapestry. Still she must attempt amends, and not plummet headlong into the delusion of uselessness. At the same time we return to the old theme of too much power foiling and imprisoning the wielder in the forthcoming dialogue.Inside the construct, she found bare dirt between crooked walls supporting a ceiling that looked like it might fall on her at any moment. Gaps among the stones let patches of Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir’s shining into the gloom, but that glow did not lift the shadows from Jeremiah’s mien. He might have been little more than an emblem of the deeper night awaiting the Earth.
Of course, none of this would perhaps have occurred, had she had been content over rousing tamer snakes back in the the realm of inept sheriffs and inane Joans, but her continual coveting for Covenant surpassed any further amatory relationships…
Not only should Jeremiah extract lessons and wisdom from these paragraphs, but also the readers. This, and Kindwind’s aforementioned speech in chapter 9. have struck me as some of the more profound parts of the book; how about you?“I’m more like you than you think. There were a lot of things that I refused to talk about. I kept them secret. That hurt me, of course, but I could live with it. The part that I didn’t understand, was that I hurt my friends at the same time.
They feel like they protect us--like we don’t have to be ashamed of our secrets, or ashamed of ourselves, as long as no one knows about them. We tell ourselves that we’re doing the right thing by keeping them. But that isn’t true. Mostly we keep them because we don’t trust ourselves. We really are ashamed. We think we’re at fault and we’re going to be condemned, or that we’re weak when everyone else is strong, or that we actually deserve to be in pain and alone.”
Alas, in real life the unleashing of old demons or total sincerity in everything can shatter relationships one imagined as sturdy. Some cannot deal with the idea of suicide or mental illness of any ilk--then again one must inquire if such fellows themselves were ever constructed of the right friendship particles or if some clandestineness of their own inhibits them from accepting the confessions of another. One regrets the fact that the equivalents of Giants rarely exist in our demesne--beings that neither judge nor spite.
Linden’s unbosoming makes Jeremiah stumble.
Still, she plows on, reaching out into the deepest ravines of her fault. How do you think all this will affect Jeremiah’s character arc? He is expected to grow up in a figurative five minutes--much like Davies Hyland in a diverse multiverse--and at the same time learn to master Earthpower and other esoteric wossnames.Hearing his mother accuse herself made him feel threatened. For years, she had been his foundation. Now he could not be sure of her.
Back to the mother’s ghost army:
So, during the Second Chronicles and the forthcoming years converging towards Runes, Linden never fully learned the lesson of trust. There is a passage somewhere in AATE where she doubts the reliability Grueburn--quite a slight against the Swordmain’s care and love, particularly after multiple skurjfests and fleeing from She Who Must Not! Had the warrior wished to rid herself of the burden, she could have flung the flea-sized female into the Bane’s maw instead of scuttling on all fours through the tunnels of the Lost Deep akin to a peculiar spider.“I kept it secret because I was afraid that my friends would interfere. I didn’t trust them enough to believe that they would understand, or that they would still be my friends if they knew the truth. [. . .] We’re in this mess right now because I kept secrets.”
Well, better backtrack one’s missteps later than never. Jeremiah begins to thaw, and imparts to mommy some of the Kasty-nasties. Just as Linden feels ashamed of her secrets, the boy is ashamed of his seeming worthlessness and the revelment in destruction.
The revelation about possession shocks Linden, yet she fathoms the flavor of the experience, having both intruded upon a person’s mind and been mentally raped herself. Jeremiah’s insistence of his futilely otiose unavailingness however heats up her temper.“He reached out and took me like I was nothing. Good for nothing. Useless.”
Regrettably, her confessions do not console the son. We are left with an imbalance of roiling sentiments, the final direction of which remains to be seen.Without pausing to consider what she said, Linden snapped, “That’s how I feel. I’ve already used up everything I know how to do. [. . .] It doesn’t matter how much power I have because I have no idea what to do with it.”
Meanwhile, the World Serpent...ah, how many a time have I repeated this? Anyhow, the heroes must escape and post-Mahrtiir begin his Forbidding ritual. During my dictionary-digging ventures, I found a synonym for the root term “to forestall”, which the author has encased into a plant-y pun by dropping a single L. It means “to forbid”. Hence, Caerwood does not merely master this power, but is the power, just as Covenant embodies the essence of wild magic. However, the task necessitates some instruments or catalysts, just as Covenant can activate his full potential through the krill: the essential staff of strength and Linden’s blessing. Observe that he does not request a boon from the Timewarden or the Elohim-deliverer. His substance will thrive neither on leprous molecules nor random structures in pocket dimensions, but on something else.His struggle was terrible to watch. [. . .] Sharing herself, Linden had not reassured him, she had precipitated a crisis which he had been fighting to avoid. But he also had reason to know that safety was a trap: that every sanctuary was also a prison.
Fertility and healing and love. Bottled Essence of Linden™ to effectuate its proper purpose instead of being wasted on self-loathing. Here the reader can see one of the major themes of the series in mini-action.Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir unfurled ancient tunes around him, verse and refrain. “This invoked bourne of verdure and health is small. By the measure of the world’s end, it is little more than vainglory. But I will not have it so. I will not. Here stands the forgotten truth of wood, just as the fane which preserves the Elohim expresses another truth also forgotten. While my bourne endures, it affirms that the Worm and death are not the sum of all things. Bless this beauty with your strength. Nourish it, so that I may suffice in its defense.”
Everything then bursts into glory, defying the brooding destruction. Coldspray slices off a bough from Caerwillow with the effort of cutting ripe cheese, and presents the gift to the Forestal. Now, he has armed and armored himself; towers ready to oppose havoc. The rest of the party flees, and outside the oasis alights upon the worm-storm, a phenomenon blood-curdling and marrow-freezing to behold!Then she reached into herself, and brought forth Earthpower and Law for their intended purpose: not for battle and killing, but for sustenance and restoration. Her health-sense guided her, first into recognition of the thetic nature of the Forestal’s harmonies, then into awareness of their interplay, then into the sensitivity to their tones and timbres. [. . .] She went deep into the dirt to fill it with Earthpower, feed every requesting root. Baked and beaten earth she enriched until it became loam. From the soil, she brought Law and energy upward, encouraging sluggish sap, enhancing the hardiness of bark, suffusing boughs and twigs and leaves with anticipation. Among the branches, she added luster to the Forestal’s gleams until they shone like refined stars.
I shall not speculate further over SRD’s familiarity with “writhing orgies”, but laud him for another piece of poetic perdition. The torrent of thunderstrokes reminds me of the shooting scene in ROTE, however. Coincidence or something deliberate?It was enormous.
During the night, the blast of presage had reconciled its confusion. Instead of writhing from one direction to another like a beast in agony, it had become a stiff assault; a gale arising from the heart of the utter blackness that now loomed into the heavens like the front of an atmospheric tsunami. Eerie ululations like the anguish of ghouls sounded in the distance. Scourged gusts scooped groans from the craters that littered the ground; scaled into wailing on the ragged edges of the belabored ridge.
The core was a blare of might that defied perception: too loud to be heard, too dark for vision; too savage to register as anything except horror. But at the fringes of the Worm’s approach, thunder crashed, a wild barrage like a convulsion that would never end. It seethed like the collapse of cliffs. Within it, armies of lightning stalked the plain, hammering the earth until the very dirt seemed to erupt and burn. Sudden and erratic, flashes lurid as bruises punctuated the blackness. On either side of the advance, desolations writhed like orgies, articulating the Worm’s hunger.
Foul’s fanged flashes accompany Linden and Jeremiah into death in the real world, and the Worm’s fanged flashes into oblivion in the Land? Whatever the similarity, the escapers stand spellbound enough afore the bombardment of energies not to sense the approach of eight running Giantesses. We are talking about anything between five to seven thousand kilos of mass pounding the ground, a tremble that should make horses stumble and small rocks bounce up and down. Since when did the titans turn into feather-fairies?Lightning flared and yowled, accelerating towards a crisis. Fangs hung poised for violence in every strike. Static mounted in the air. The wind gusted like a wail torn from the throat of the night.
In any event, the group goads itself into a gallop, forsaking the almost pathetic form of the Forestal. Ah, what will betide him?
And, behold, for he is not a mere windchime!Small against the background of the bright willow, Caerwood stood before the blast. It wrenched at him, tried to shred his robe. Shafts of lightning marched closer with every heartbeat. Gales tore the branches of his staff. With music and wood, he opposed the dark as if he had within him the authority to deny annihilation.
And:He sang, and refused to be silenced. The Worm’s tumult was less than a league away, less than half a league, and still he stood. He was more than Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir. He was also Manethrall Mahrtiir, given to service. He refused as if his No could sway away even the unthinking appetite of the World’s End.
Without crafting any double-entendres out of the last observation, Covenant commences a krill-circle, and the company vanishes into dimensions unsung without witnessing the outcome.“Linden Avery!” Somehow Stave made himself heard through the chaos of running and winds, lightning and thunder. “Chosen, attend!” The Forestal succeeds! The Worm slows!”
Linden stared in disbelief. The Forestal could not--
He could.
The Worm was slowing down. And slowing more and more as the Forestal’s denial stiffened.
What an episode! A tale which will remain, indeed.
* * *
SRD’s dictionary menu:
Bedizened: dress up garishly and tastelessly
nascent anadem: a commencing garland
virulent: extremely poisonous
truculent: defiantly aggressive
spavied: (of horses) afflicted with a swelling of the hock-joint
thetic: dogmatic
fuligin: a hypothetical colour darker than black, aka blacker than the blackest black times infinity. Is SRD a Metalocalypse fan?
epiphany: a divine manifestation
cynosure: something that attracts attention and admiration
(Seriously, Frosty, I appreciate your continuing great efforts to inform us of the ancient mythological background for these scenes. And I completely missed the significance of the willow tree tying in with Linden's fate being "writ in water", so am glad that you pointed that out! You're going to be a hard act for me to follow.)
But Linden Ringthane's declaration that she's very fond of Hyn and Khelen maged to shore up my faith in her before I started to join THOOLAH (guess I'm staying a lifelong member of OPAL, after all).
Well, I would hope that practice brings improvements; at least the entendres have doubled. 
Keep your eloschemy fingers off the lovable BFG! 
= 
