TC is hurt and grieves this loss. Self-doubt and questions assails him...and LA is staring ahead, a flicker of light and someone approaches. It's an old stooped man. Here's the books second heart-wrenching moment, the first being LA's encounter with the creator...goes like this...Doesn't feel-? He blinked at her. For a moment, he did not understand. To him, it was just a storm, natural violence like any other. But then he caught her meaning. To her, the storm felt unnatural. It offended some instinctive sensitivity in her.
Already she was ahead of him; her senses were growing attuned to the Land, while his remained flat and dull, blind to the spirit of what he percieved. Ten years ago he had been able to do what she had done: identify the rightness and wrongness, the health or corruption, of physical things and processes, of wind, rain, stone, wood, flesh. But now he could feel nothing but the storm's vehemence, as if such force had no meaning, no implication. No soul.
That TC is remembered and spoken of...it was a great feeling reading it. All this strain and duress and suddenly this soaring moment. I just love the word "Illender". Never read it anywhere but the chrons...Suddenly the old man jerked up his right hand, raised it with the palm forward, and spread his fingers. Covenant copied the gesture. He did not know whether or not Lord Foul had prepared this encounter for him. But he needed shelter, food, information. And he was prepared to acknowledge anyone who could keep a brand alight in this rain. As he lifted his half-hand into the light, his ring gleamed dully on the second finger.
The sight shocked the old man. He winced, mumbled to himself, retreated a step as in fear. Then he pointed tremolously at Covenant's ring. "White gold?" he cried. His voice shook.
"Yes!"Covenant replied.
"Halfhand?"
"Yes!"
"How are you named?" the man quavered.
Covenant struggled to drive each word through the storm. "Ur-Lord Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and white gold wielder!"
"Illender?" gasped the man as if the rain were suffocating him. "Prover of Life?"
"Yes!"
The old man retreated another step. The torchlight gave his visage a dismayed look. Abruptly he turned, started scrambling frailly upwards through water and muck.
We learn that the mans name is Nassic...
The man helps them out of the ravine, down from the mountain and, finally, to his house. They step inside...and nothing is as TC expects it to be. Wood and stone everywhere, even iron! And suddenly TC smells smoke. They burn wood!
So beautifully stated...but more shocks are in wait for TC. One is that the torch is kept burning by the mans blood, he realises more and more that he really has lost his "land-sense", LA has it. He learns about the sunbane -something awful, and that the man has never heard of hurtloam and Earthpower. So much is wrong and LA doesn't understand TC's distress...And more strange stuff, The Clave, Mithil Stonedown full of evil worshippers.The people he had known here would never have voluntarily consumed wood for any purpose. They had always striven to use the life of wood, the Earthpower in it, without destroying the thing they used. Wood, soil, stone water- the people of the Land had cherished every manifestation of life.
That even the memory of the Unbeliever is somehow distorted! You get the feeling here that this is something totally different from the first chrons, that something truly awful has happened."...They are wicked! They harken to the words of the Clave-words of abomination. They mock the old promises, saying that the Unbeliever is a madness in the minds of the Unfettered. You must not go there."
Nassic leaves for his son Sunder to help them through the village and leaves them in the night pondering. To LA TC speaks of the time-difference, that maybe four thousand years has passed while only ten in the real world...And he speaks of his love for the Land, about hurtloam, Earthpower...
What words! Almost makes me cry! What a celebration! ...TC's words are so strong and beautiful and passionate and we all remember the Land from the first chrons and here we understand how much TC has come to love the Land and it's people and the longing for the way it was. "To hurt a man who has lost everything. Give him back something broken.""...The people I knew never built fires that destroyed wood. They didn't have to. For them, everything around them-wood, water, stone , flesh-every part of the physical world- was full of what they called Earthpower . The power of life..."
"...The Earthpower was the essence of the Land." Memories thronged in him, visions of the Lords, of the masters of stone- and wood-lore. "It was vital to them, so sustaining, that they gave their lives to it. Did everything they could to serve it, rather than exploit it. It was strength, sentience, passion. Life. A fire like this would have horrified them." But word were inadequate. He could not convey his longing for a world were aspen and granite, water and soil, nature itself, were understood, revered for their potency and loveliness. A world with a soul, deserving to be treasured...
This way LA recieves information about the Land and it's people and about TC's previous visits to the Land. And about what drove him and changed him and finally he ends up with...
Yes definitely some sort of attraction here...TC falls asleep, wakes up later, the rain has stopped and they decide to leave the hut because Nassic hasn't returned. They find him brutally murdered just outside the hut. LA percieves this with her special sense of the Land as being evil. They carry him inside...and depart once more for Mithil Stonedown. On their way, a familiar route to TC, he prepares to say something to LA."...The Land was incredibly beautiful. And the way people loved it, served it, that was beautiful too. Lepers," he concluded mordantly, "are susceptible to beauty." In her own way Linden seemed beautiful to him.
No, I went, when I read this the first time,. You can tell her but not now, not now...But pure in his heart as he is, he of course tells her, about Lena...He was hunting for courage to say what had to be said...He glanced at Linden from time to time, wondering where she had learned the toughness, unwisdom or desperation which enabled or drove her to accompany him. He ached for the capacity to descry the truth out of her, determine whether her severity came from conviction or dread.
She did not believe in evil.
He had to tell her.
Then they are attacked by a group of people and hit unconscious."The first time I was here, I met a girl. Lena. She was just a kid-but she was my friend. She kept me alive on Kevin's Watch, when I was afraid and it could have killed me." His long loneliness cried out against his self-betrayal.
"I raped her."
She stared at him. Her lips formed soundless words. Raped-?
Here ends chapter five... a horrifying and painfully beautiful chapter. The road through darkness and despair continues. So many awesome passages... TC's self-doubt increases and LA not understanding any of her role yet in what is happening. But a lot of information is given to her(and to us readers) about the Land and it's people, the way it was...simply beautiful...
Here is where we first see the corruption, the losses. My thoughts were, "Oh no, what has he done to it? Where is this all going?" I wanted to read more, but I didn't. 
, very good point tho...)
