When Thomas Covenant returned to the Land in the Second Chronicles, he here conveys to Linden, quite succinctly, what visiting the Land is all about. It is not going to be a picnic in fairyland.In [u]The Wounded Land[/u] was wrote:In a tight voice, she asked, "What do we do now?"
"Now," he said grimly, "if I can hold off my vertigo, we get down from here, and go find out what kind of trouble we're in."
Get down from here. Keep going, move forward, find out what’s at stake, what matters to you. If I can hold off my vertigo. All your weaknesses, the physical as well as the emotional, will be tested, exploited. Find out what kind of trouble we’re in. Things have already been set in motion against you: enter the traps, comprehend them, and master them.
As this chapter opens, and Linden is falling into the Land, we should bear this in mind. Linden will find out what is at stake. But traps have been painstakingly laid. And Linden’s instincts to protect Jeremiah will be the first weakness to be exploited.
And this, as well: Earlier in the story, we had wondered, where is the old beggar? We asked this because the beginning of each Chronicles begs to be compared with the beginnings of the earlier Chronicles. Identifying the similarities and the differences in the way that Covenant and Linden are summoned to the Land helps us understand the events that follow. Once we can solve Donaldson’s puzzle, that is. The clues that we find won’t have any meaning until we have gone much farther into the story.
Mark these passages. Remember them. This will be important.
The chapter opens with Linden descending, falling, into the abyss between worlds, while the echoes of gunshots fade away. Two things burn in her. Concern for her son, Jeremiah. And disappointment in herself for losing him. The passion of love, and the passion of guilt.
She knows that she is shot, dead. Lytton and Sandy might be okay. But these things aren’t as important.She had failed to protect her son, failed utterly. She had not so much as witnessed his fate.
But the very thought of Jeremiah in Foul’s hands evokes such passion (love! guilt!) that it ignites the wild magic. Conveniently, or like another click in a plan ratcheting forward step by step, this heals her transcendental flesh, leaving her to be whole in the Land. The same thing happened to Covenant the last time, and so we are filled with dread, because we know Foul’s plans are unfolding.
That’s when the visions begin. In each other Chronicles, Covenant’s first arrival in the Land includes an informative tête à tête arranged by Lord Foul. This is his time. But this is not what happens for Linden; this time, in this Chronicles, Linden receives strange visions instead, visions seemingly triggered by the spark of wild magic.
The first vision is of Joan. Joan in the bed in Haven Farm, raking Covenant’s flesh. Then of Joan in a hospital bed, with Linden beside her. Then a fanatic preaching to Joan of expiation.
But the visions are not exactly Joan’s memories: there are strange transpositions. Linden becomes Joan; Jeremiah seems to be the preacher; Covenant replaces Roger as Joan’s son. So, then, these visions are not literal; they are symbolic; they are not true, but they convey meaning. They are meant to move Linden, to provoke her.
The vision of Covenant’s repudiation of Joan (of Linden) fuels the passions of love and guilt (It’s not her fault! I love you!), and wild magic erupts from Linden uncontrollably. Foul is playing Linden like a fiddle.
It is no coincidence that we are bluntly reminded in this chapter of Linden’s imprisonment in Revelstone. You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth. Through eyes and ears and touch, you are made to be what the Despiser requires. Foul moves Covenant with words, but he moves Linden with visions, now as before. (Perhaps Linden’s acuity would make mere words seem hollow.) The first part of Runes is called “chosen for this desecration” to remind us of samadhi’s words as he coerces, blinds, frightens Linden through her sight. And he’s doing it again, as Linden falls through the ether.
Linden will think that she’s grown beyond this threat. But Foul will be one step ahead of her. Linden may now be self-protected against any fears for herself - but Foul has her son. He dares to compel her to his ends again. Here. Now. And, judging from Linden’s reaction: she has entered the trap.
But the visions from Joan reveal much. Mark these passages.
If she failed, I would need to take her place, Roger once spoke. Important: in the previous chapter, the author reminded us of these words, twice. Now, we see, that it was Joan who first spoke these words. And the meaning is a little clearer. If I fail to go there, to that place, you’ll have to take my place there. Someone has told Joan things, told her of the Land, told her a long time ago. But has she failed? Has Roger taken her place? Or does she now matter?He goes somewhere, she told him. I know he does. It's a powerful place …
I have to go there. I have to find that place. …
If I fail, she adjured him, you'll have to take my place.
Conveniently, or like another click in a plan ratcheting forward step by step, Linden gains her health-sense as the visions play before her eyes. And she discovers:
Hellfire! The implications are staggering! The questions are insurmountable! A Raver has possession of white gold. And Joan is the summoner, not Foul, not a Raver. Raver + Joan + Ring + Summoner.Now a Raver had taken hold of Joan. Perhaps it had lived in her for years. Certainly it filled her now, feeding on her madness, consuming her with its voracious malevolence.
And it possessed Joan's ring. Turiya Herem could wield wild magic in the service of the Despiser. Coerced by the Raver, Joan had summoned others after her. Roger. Linden herself.
And Jeremiah - ?
How? Is Joan’s white gold powerful enough to let a possessed Joan summon people to the Land? “With her white gold ring, Joan now wielded her power to rip open the barrier between worlds.” It would seem so.
And why? Does this have something to do with the rebound effect, that occurs when the summoner dies? But Joan is dead in the real world, leaving her to die, or to transform, in the Land. What if she becomes undying, like Covenant? But does it matter when Linden is shot through the chest anyway? If it doesn’t, what are these mechanizations for?
If we’re to believe Linden, then Roger has been summoned to the Land as well. If he is dead in the real world, he is free, as Joan is, as Linden is, to transform in the Land. We know that we will explore this fully. What forms will Linden, Joan, and Roger take?In the Gradual Interview, Donaldson wrote:In the most literal sense, death in the "real world" for a character like Hile Troy, or Thomas Covenant, simply means that character can no longer return to his/her "real" life. But of course the implications go much farther (and are explored more fully in "The Last Chronicles"). Literal death in the Land as well is a significant possibility. But neither Troy nor Covenant actually died in the Land: rather they were transformed; became beings of an entirely different kind.
(11/21/2004)
It’s noteworthy that the Donaldson credo, explored in “The Killing Stroke”, appears here.
Linden may not be defeated yet, but she isn’t winning this first battle with Foul: she seems to have taken the bait, and Foul is reeling her in. Foul’s visionary manipulation evokes Linden’s unguarded passions. And the second flash of wild magic ejects her from Joan’s visions as easily as the first flash thrust her into them.Thomas Covenant - the real Covenant, not the tormentor in Joan's mind - had taught Linden that no contempt or cruelty or hurt could defeat her if she did not choose to be defeated. The Despiser might assail and savage her as a predator attacked prey, but he could not deprive her of herself. Only her own weaknesses could wreak so much harm.
That she believed utterly.
She finds herself in a new vision, in the cavern of the One Tree. The vision has her rousing the Worm with wild magic, as she had often feared Covenant would do. Again, there are strange transpositions: it is Linden who would wreak the world’s destruction. And transpositions imply symbolic truth. For lo!
Linden will destroy the Land. It is nothing less than prophecy. Remember this.No! she cried in protest. No! This was more of Joan's madness; more of Lord Foul's malice. But it was not: it was prophecy. She had regained her health-sense and knew the truth.
And one last vision. Foul has saved the best for last. This will be important.
As a creation, these monsters fit the Land so well. They partake of the Nicor, and the Worm of the World’s End. They borrow a little from the fire-lions of Mount Thunder. They inherit a little character from the fertility of the Sunbane. They remind us of the fire “born among the foundations of the firmament” which jeopardized the Earth at Kastenessen’s Appointment. They are so appropriate that they’re scary.Now she stood on a bluff overlooking a plain of rich life and ineffable loveliness. The ground below her undulated among hills and woodlands; luxuriant greenswards; streams delicate as crystal, cleansing as sunlight. Here and there, majestic Gilden trees lifted their boughs to the flawless sky, and vast oaks shed beneficent shade. Birds like reified song soared overhead while small animals and deer gamboled alertly among the woods. With her enhanced discernment, Linden beheld the vibrant health of the plain, its apt fecundity and kindliness. She might have been gazing down at Andelain, the essential treasure of the Land, born of its most necessary beauty; the incarnation of everything which she had striven to attain when she had fashioned the new Staff of Law.
This, too, felt like a form of prophecy.
As she drank in the gentle grandeur below her, however, a spot of wrongness like a chancre appeared amid the grasses. It was not large - not at first - but its intensity multiplied moment by moment as she studied it in dismay. Soon it seemed as bright as a glimpse into a furnace, incandescent, malefic, and brutally hot. And from it writhed forth a fiery beast like a serpent of magma; an avatar of lava with the insidious, squirming length of a snake and the massive jaws of a kraken. While she watched, appalled, the monster began to devour its surroundings as if earth and grass and trees were the flesh on which it fed.
And around it other chancres appeared. They, too, gathered intensity until they gave birth to more monsters which also feasted on the plain, consuming its loveliness in horrifying chunks. A handful of the creatures would destroy the entire vista in a matter of hours. But more of them clawed ravening from the earth, and still more, as calamitous as the Sunbane. Soon every blade and leaf of life would be gone. If the beasts were not stopped, they might eat through the world.
This, too, felt like a form of prophecy. And that’s scary, too.
What’s the connection between these two final visions? Symbolism for Linden destroying the Earth. Then images of the Earth being destroyed. Without further information, you can only conclude that the monsters are somehow the result of Linden’s actions, that Linden has brought them forth.
Oh, Foul, what have you done! You’ve manipulated Linden magnificently. You’ve taken Linden’s feelings of love and guilt (which you, in the real world, engendered), and exacerbated them. Then you instilled in her the hardened recklessness of someone who knows as well as a prophecy that she will destroy the Earth no matter what she does. Will it be any wonder if Linden does anything other than rush out to save Jeremiah, heedless of the cost to the Land?
Of course, Foul’s parting shot is perfect in its devastation:
Tell her that I have her son. Oh, we know to whom he is speaking: he is speaking to Linden. “I speak to set the feet of my hearers upon the paths I design for them.”"It is enough,' Lord Foul said softly. "I am content." His tone wrapped around her caressingly, like the oil of cerements and death. "She will work my will, and I will be freed at last."
He may have been speaking to Joan. Or to turiya Herem.
Then the shock of her power rebounded against her, and she was flung away as if in rejection; as if the abyss itself sought to vomit her out.
For a moment longer, she could hear the Despiser. As his voice receded, he said, "Tell her that I have her son."
It is enough. Foul is content. She will work his will. Made to be what the Despiser requires. There is nothing left but for Linden to wash up on the shores of the Land like a sea-battered mariner escaping the wreck of her life.
Mark these passages. Remember them. This will be important.Once more she cried Jeremiah's name. For a moment, the sound echoed back to her, vacant and forlorn under the wide sky. Then it vanished into the sunlight and left no trace.
And so I start over....
Okay, you're officially scaring me. I had always been under the assumption that our world - the "real" world - was more or less "safe" from whatever cosmic calamity occurred in the Land's universe. But if the two "realities" are indeed blending (or colliding?), then yeah, I guess we may be in trouble. Let me fetch my security blanket...
