Kevin's Watch

duchess of malfi wrote:You have only read a few chapters of six long books...if you would read further in the next two books you will learn much more about both Atiaran and Lena. Since you have read so little and no one wants to spoil the story for you, it makes it very difficult to talk to you about a lot of these issues.

amanibhavam wrote:The point is, IMHO: SRD does not want us to forgive Covenant. He himself wouldn't want us to forgive him. That's not the point. The point is to accept him as he is, as he accepts the Land as it is.

"I've come for you, Gibbon. For you. If you come out, I'll let the rest of the Riders live." You are more dangerous now than you've ever been. "Foul doesn't think you can beat me. He's using you to make me beat myself. But I don't care about that anymore. Either way, you're going to die. Come out and get it over with."

The words seemed to fail before they reached the end of the passage. Revelstone loomed above him like the corpse of a city which had been slain ages ago. The pressure of the sun drew a line of bitter sweat down his spine.

And a figure appeared in the end of the tunnel. Black against the reflection of the courtyard, it moved outward. Its feel struck soft echoes of crepitation from the stone.

Covenant tried to swallow--and could not. The desert sun had him by the throat.

A pair of hot pains transfixed his forearm. The scars gleamed like fangs. An invisible darkness flowed out of the passage toward him, covering his fire with the pall of venom. The sound of steps swelled.

Then sandled feet and the fringe of a red robe broached the sunshine; and Covenant went momentarily faint with the knowledge that his first gambit had failed. Light ran swiftly up the lines of the stark scarlet fabric to the black chasuble which formalized the robe. Hands appeared, empty of the characteristic rukh, the black iron rod like a scepter with an open triangle fixed atop it, which a Rider should have held. Yet this was surely a Rider. Not Gibbon: the na-Mhoram wore black. He carried a crozier as tall as himself. The habitual beatitude or boredom of his round visage was punctured only by the red bale of his eyes. The who came out to meet Covenant was not Gibbon.

A Rider, then. He appeared thick of torso, though his ankles and wrists were thin, and his bearded cheeks had been worn almost to gauntness by audacity or fear. Wisps of wild hair clung like fanacticism to his balding skull. His eyes had a glazed aspect.

He held his palms open before him as if to demonstrate that he had come unarmed.

Covenant wrestled dwon his weakness, fought a little moisture into his throat so that he could speak. In a tone that should have warned the Rider, he said. "Don't waste my time, I want Gibbon."

"Halfhand, I greet you." The man replied. His voice was steady, but it suggested the shrillness of panic. "Gibbon na-Mhoram is entirely cognizant of you and will waste neither time nor life in your name. What is your purpose here?"

Impressions of danger crawled between Covenant's shoulderblades. His mouth was full of the copper taste of fear. The Rider's trunk appeared unnaturally thick; and his robe seemed to move slightly of it's own accord as if the cloth were seething. Covenant's scars began to burn like rats gnawing at his flesh. He hardly heard himself reply, "This has gone on too long. You make the whole world stink. I'm going to put a stop to it."

The Rider bared his teeth--a grin that failed. His gaze did not focus on Covenant. "Then I must tell you that the na-Mhoram does not desire speech with you. His word has been given to me to speak, if you will hear it."

Covenant started to ask, What word is that? But the question never reached utterance. With both hands, the Rider unbelted the sash of his robe. In prescient dread, Covenant watched the Rider open his raiment to the sun.

From the line of his shoulders to the flex of his knees, his entire body was covered with wasps.

Great yellow wasps, as big as Covenant's thumb.

When the light touched them, they began to snarl.

For one hideous moment, they writhed where they were; and the Rider wote them as if he were one of the Sunbane-warped, made savage and abominable by corruption. then the swarm launched itself at Covenant.

In that instant, the world went black. Venom crashed against his heart like the blow of a sledgehammer.

Black fire; black poison; black ruin. The flame raging from his ring should have been a s pure and argent as the metal from which it sprang; but it was not, was not. It was an abyss that yawned around him, a gulf striding through the air and the ground and the Keep to consume them, swallow the world and leave no trace. And every effort he made to turn the dark fire white, force it back to the clean pitch of it's true nature, only raised the blazed higher, widened the void. Swiftly, it became as huge as the hillside, hungry for ruin.

Linden was not shouting at him. If she had torn her heart with screams, he would not have been able to hear her. She was too far away, and the gathering cataclysm of his power filled all his senses. Yet he heard her in his mind--heard her as she had once cried to him across the Worm's aura and the white ring's eruption. This is what Foul wants!--felt the remembered gasp of her arms as she had striven to wrest him back from doom. If he let his conflagration swell, they would all die, she and the others he loved and the Land he treasured, all of them ripped out of life and meaning by blackness.

The strain of self-mastery pushed him far beyond himself. He was driven to a stretched and tenuous desperation from which he would never be able to turn back--a hard, wild exigency that he would have to see through to its conclusion for good or ill, ravage or restitution. But the simple knowledge that he would not be able to turn back and did not mean to try enabled him to strangle the destruction pouring from him.

Abruptly, his vision cleared--and he had not been stung. Thousands of small, charred bodies still smoked on the bare ground. Not one of the wasps was left to threaten him.

The Rider remained standing with his mouth open and his eyes white, miraculously unscathed and astonished.

Covenant felt no triumph: he had gone too far for triumph. But he was certain of himself now, at least for the moment. To the Rider, he said, "Tell Gibbon he had his chance." His voice held neither doubt nor mercy. "Now I'm coming in after him."

W.B. wrote:I'd call what he did unpremeditated rape. Unfortunately, we don't really have a way in English of differentiating between the act of, for example, stealing and the innate qualities that define a person ("he's a thief"). Sometimes the person becomes the crime and it's assumed that no matter what they'll just instinctively repeat it if given the opportunity, which I would argue against in Covenant's case.

I await the flaming responses

By the way Thomas acts, it seems more like he's rejecting to believe the reality, rather than believing it is a dream. In the beggining perhaps, but even later on, as you get into his thoughts, there are a lot of hints of his rejection. In any case, wouldn't he know that dreams usually don't last that long in such detail. Or that, 99% of the time, you wake up automatically the first time you realise you are dreaming within in a dream. Certainly, by the time he ravishes Lena he is not misguided but in denial.

Also, we've been discussing Thomas and accusing him. What about Lena herself? Didn't she have the power to stop when she had the chance? Or even cease making moves on him and giving all sorts of hints. I'd say she dug in her own hole.

Blue_Spawn wrote:Why is it that these school girls always go for the older men? Thomas must be like 120 or something. And he was a jerk too. Never really said a single good thing to her when she met him. Bah, jackasses always win.