TPTP 16 - Colossus
Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2020 5:47 am
The moment is made surreal by having the idea suggested to the reader that Covenant's leprosy is to help Lord Foul's purpose of destroying the world by being spread through the wind as a highly-contagious harbinger of rottenness. (Surreal, because leprosy obviously cannot spread that way, and is at most minimally contagious.)
Realizing Covenant doesn't have his ring was vividly shocking to me the first time I read this chapter, because up until now in the story he has never been separated from his ring for any significant amount of time (though he once gave his ring to Eldest Corimini of Revelwood, only to have Corimini give it back in a moment's time). My thought when first reading this was, "Okay, how the hell is Thomas Covenant going to find his way out of THIS mess?!?"Covenant landed heavily amid sarcastic mirth. He was still too dazed to collect his thoughts. Triock's disgust affected him like a command; he lay prostrate with his eyes closed, trying to smell himself.
It was true. He stank of leprosy. The disease in his hands and feet reeked, gave off a rotten effluvium out of all proportion to the physical size of his infection. And its message was unmistakable. The ordure in him, the putrefaction of his flesh, was spreading--expanding as if he were contagious, as if at last even his body had become a violation of the fundamental health of the Land. In some ways, this was an even more important violation than the Despiser's winter--or rather his stench was the crown of the wind, the apex of Lord Foul's intent. That intent would be complete when his illness became part of the wind, when ice and leprosy together extinguished the Land's last vitality.
Then, in one intuitive leap, he understood his sense of bereavement. He identified his loss. Without looking to verify the perception, he knew that his ring had been taken from him; he could feel its absence like destitution in his heart.
The Despiser's manipulations were complete. The coercion and subterfuge which had shaped Covenant's experiences in the Land had borne fruit. Like a Stone-warped tree, they had fructified to produce this unanswerable end. The wild magic was now in Lord Foul's possession.
A wave of grief rushed through Covenant. The enormity of the disaster he had precipitated upon the Land appalled him. His chest locked in a clench of sorrow, and he huddled on the verge of weeping.
In some way, seeing Triock like this is more terrible than seeing him Raver-possessed, because we now see the full cost of his long-steadfast loyalty to the Oath of Peace. No wonder Covenant can't stay outraged at him.The man had changed again. The strange combination of loathing and hunger, of anger and fear, was gone; the impression he had created that he was using his own anguish cunningly was gone. In the place of such distortions was an extravagant bitterness, a rage not controlled by any of his old restraints. He was himself and not himself. The former supplication of his eyes--the balance and ballast of his long acquaintance with gall--had foundered in passion. Now his brows clenched themselves into a knot of violence above the bridge of his nose; the pleading lines at the corners of his eyes had become as deep as scars; and his cheeks were taut with grimaces. Yet something in his eyes themselves belied the focus of his anger. His orbs were glazed and milky, as if they were blurred by cataracts, and they throbbed with a vain intensity. He looked as if he were going blind.