As in TWL, the story opens from Linden Avery's point of view. Relatively little action occurs in this opening chapter: it's the calm before the storm.
It's the morning of a sunny day, as the great dromond Starfare's Gem heads in to dock at Coercri. As the company of the quest goes down to meet the ship, Linden sorts out her feelings toward herself and toward Thomas Covenant, in light of what she has experienced so far.
Linden sees Covenant as "an affirmation--an assertion of life" against the Despiser, a man who is committed to the Land at any cost. By contrast, she sees herself as someone who doesn't affirm life so much as simply deny death: "All her severity, all her drive toward medical effectiveness against death, had been negative from the start--a rejection of her own mortal heritage rather than an approval of the beliefs she nominally served."
"With his venom and his white ring, he was the most dangerous man she had ever known." But Linden desires Covenant's dangerous quality and wants to emulate him: just as he is a danger to Lord Foul, she wants "to be a danger to the forces which impelled people to their deaths."
As for her health-sense, Linden sees that it can be open to beauty, not just terror: after escaping the Sarangrave and the influence of the Sunbane, she had at last "tasted the tangible loveliness of the world" in the natural health of Seareach. Also, because she was able to help her friends against the lurker of the Sarangrave, Linden sees that her percipience can accomplish good, not just be used as a tool "to achieve the ruin of the earth" as Gibbon-Raver had proclaimed. She begins to believe she can free herself from the doom of his words.
Then Linden's percipience is drawn to the approach of Starfare's Gem, and she is awestruck by the majesty and vital stone of the Giantship, and by the vitality of its crew. She sees Grimmand Honninscrave high on the wheeldeck of his ship: "His shout in answer to Pitchwife's hail echoed off the face of Coercri, making the Grieve resound with welcome for the first time in many centuries. Then the sunlight and the ship blurred before Linden as sudden tears filled her eyes as if she had never seen joy before."
After the dromond is secured, the crew of Giants go forward to look at the city of the Unhomed, and Linden finds herself "surrounded by weathered, brawny men and women twice her height--sailors built like oaks, and yet as full of movement and wonder as saplings." After so much time, Coercri is once more alive with Giants.
But they cannot stay long. The First tells Honninscrave she has decided to help Covenant in his quest for the One Tree, and that it's a mission of the gravest urgency. Honninscrave recalls his crew to the ship, to the good-natured protest of some of them. He responds: "Patience, sluggards! Are you Giants, that a little patience eludes you? Let stories await their turn, to ease the labor of the seas. The First requires haste!"
While watching the Giants, Covenant asks Linden: "Tell me..do you think I should have tried to destroy the Clave? While I had the chance?" Linden replies: "Some infections have to be cut out. If you don't kill the disease somehow, you lose the patient. Do you think those fingers of yours were cut off out of spite?"
She doesn't mince words.
Linden boards Starfare's Gem, as does Thomas Covenant--with help from the Haruchai (White Gold Wielder and Vertigo Sufferer). Vain boards, too, and once on the deck, stays there. Really stays there.
"Sunlight covered the piers, spangled the gently heaving strip of water along the shipside, shone into the face of Coercri as if this day marked the first true dawn since the destruction of the Unhomed." Under Honninscrave's command, the Giantship Starfare's Gem pulls away from Coercri and heads out to Sea.
It boggles the mind what?
