Two pages later…“Hurtloam. The word sent conflicted squalls through Covenant in spite of his near-prostration and his complex pains. Hurtloam would heal his wounds; but it might also cure his leprosy. It had done so before. It could restore his crippled health-sense. It could make him potent and capable in ways which were denied to lepers.
It was life and ruin. It would rescue and damn him—
—because his illness was essential to him.” (p. 89)
If it’s the one word of truth or treachery, then I think Covenant is right in his interpretation. It should be both, save and damn: the hope in contradiction, the eye of the paradox, a union of opposites, a new whole made of conflicting parts. It reminds me of the statement The krill was life. from AATE. In that instance he used the krill as a siphon for Joan’s wild magic in order to seal the rifts in his mind and make himself whole again. In this instance, he is debating whether or not to accept hurtloam and healing (another word for wholeness).“—save or damn—
His frailty blurred such distinctions. The Lords had misremembered their prophecy about the wielder of white gold; or they had misunderstood it. The words should have been ‘save and damn.’ If he let himself die now, his end would be wasted. And if he let himself be healed, his life would be wasted later.
Therefore he ought to choose life.” (p. 91)
It’s sort of a profound moment in the development of Covenant’s character. The first time he used hurtloam it healed him, but his reaction led to him rape Lena. The last time he uses hurtloam he does so with full acceptance of what it is and what it means. Although he doesn’t fully make his decision until he realizes that Kevin’s Dirt will not allow his leprosy to disappear completely—which, incidentally, felt to me like an echo of the bargains he secretly made in the 1st Chronicles—his acceptance of it is a conscious embrace.
I think I feel that this act of Covenant’s is an expression of his love for the Land, and thus for life. He treats treasure berries like they are precious, sacred even. Healing mud he essentially views no differently, and when it really counted (and when, frankly, he really needed it), he embraced it, and by doing so he embraced life. I believe this was an unforeseeable but necessary step towards the climactic embrace that he later makes…