Linden comes to the realization in the ceasure that:
And that Mahrtiir “had finally identified the import of his life.”If courage and clear sight exceeded her, they did not surpass her companionsFrom the first, she had been supported by people whose hearts were bigger than hers; by loyalities more unselfish that hers. Every essential step along the path, Stave had assured Infelice, has been taken by the natural inhabitants of the Earth. Linden’s friends had urged trust until even she had heard them.
Then they left the caesure.
Aside from making me look up lenitive - I’ll take the “soothing” definition rather than “mildly laxative”, it appears that something is wrong:Sunshine. A show hillside clad in brittle grey-green grass as thick as bracken. A summer sky as lenitive as hurtloam.
Mahrtiir and the Ranyhyn made her come to her senses in time to dissipate the ceasure. For they had come to the edge of a forest defended by a Forestal. No Forestal would be forgiving of the destruction of trees. But this forest wasn’t Andelain, where Caer-Caveral dwelled. It was familiar to both Linden and Mahrtiir though. Mahrtiir deduces where they are. Garroting Deep. Where Caerroil Wildwood dwelt.For a moment, she could not breathe; she could not think. While her nerves floundered, she clung to the kind earth and wrestled with her impulse to vomit. She had arrived somewhere. Some when. Hyn had brought her here. She smelled summer in the air, felt an insistence on life in the stiff grass in spite of a prolonged paucity of rain. Straining to inhale, she caught a whiff of distant desiccation, as if she arrived close to a desert. The sky held too much dust. She had expected Andelain and lushness. She was unprepared for this baked hillside, this heat this-
Caerroil Wildwood had given Linden a question, long ago:
The time must be before the Clave and the Sunbane, Linden reasons.How may life endure in the Land, if the Forestals fail and perish, as they must, and naught remains to ward its most vulnerable treasures? We were formed to stand as guardians in the Creator’s stead. Must it transpire that beauty and truth shall pass utterly when we are gone?
Also, Hyn and Narunal had saved Linden from disaster:
They approached the forest, debating how to summon the Forestal, but there was no need, the caesure had sparked his interest, and his ire. He came:She had intended to address her appeal to Caer-Caveral; but she saw now that Hyn and Narunal understood her needs, and the Land’s, better that she did. What had she expected of Andelain’s Forestal? Had she truly imagined that meeting her before her proper time would not affect his later decisions?
In this time, here and now, she was in no danger of burdening Caer-Caveral with knowledge he hadn’t earned. The Ranyhyn had spared her a potentially catastrophic miscalculation.
Caerroil Wildwood is aware of his doom, Mahrtiir tells Linden. He must be given hope.His steps were instances of a dirge, ancient and unreconciled; irreconcilable. Lucent melody rather than light cloaked him in lordship. A penumbra of sorrow etched with gall and despair surrounded him as he advanced; and he seemed to waft rather than walk; as if her were carried along with his own puissance..
It doesn’t begin well though. Linden told him of the staff the question and her need of help.
Linden tells of the new forest, Salva Gildenbourne, after the Sunbane, and the new evils that she is determined to stop....As you foretold, I feasted on the flesh of a Raver. But the years have become an age of the Earth, and the time of my power has passed. My strength withers in my veins. I cannot restore it.
“Do you ask my aid? I have none to give. My every effort is required to slow the ruin of all that I have held dear.”
Linden tells Caerroil Wildwood she needs to know how to forbid.
“What will you forbid that I have not already failed to prevent?” is the response from the Forestal.
Linden then responds that she will try to answer his question from long ago.
Caerroil Wildwood responds to hold her answer till they travel to Gallows Howe. There she will speak and there she shall live be slain.
Clarity came to Linden regarding the Forestals as she was climbing the bleak hill of Gallows Howe:
But she did not have time to absorb everything, the Forestal wanted answers.Between the underlying loss and the accumulated gall lay a yearning of another kind altogether: a vast, sorrowing, stymied desire, not for revenge, but for restitution. The forests, and the emblem of Gallows Howe, would not have grown so darkif they had not first failed to reclaim what they had lost. If the Forestals had not failed at restitution, they would not have succumbed to ire and viciousness.
Linden told Caerroil Wildwood that he already knew the answer to the question otherwise he wouldn’t have given the Staff of Law the runes he had. She further wanted to know how to forbid. She finished her plea with a bold statement:
In spite of the last jibe, the Forestal said he would spare her. She tried to answer his question, however:Do you need a future for trees, Great One? This is your only chance. Without your help, I’m as lost as you are.”
Linden was crushed, but Mahrtiir took his cue. “By transformation.” He asked that Caerroil Wildwood transform him into a Forestal as he had with Caer-Caveral.You do not grasp that the forbidding you seek is not lore. It is neither knowledge or skill, it is essence. It si both my nature and my task. I cannot impart it.”
The Forestal takes up Linden’s Staff to aid in the transformation, as the meaning of the runes becomes clear:
The runes were to help in the creation of the new Forestal, Mahrtiir.”Yet I am grievously diminished. My strength falters. Therefore I will make use of your blackness to sustain me, as I have written that I must.”
The chapter ends with the transformation:
The end of his (Mahrtiir’s) human life had come upon him. When he emerged from the Forestal’s theurgy, the man who had been steadfast in teh face of every peril would be gone. Like the Elohim of the Colossus, he would not be able to revoke his transubstantiation. Nevertheless his gladness aspired among the harmonies of Garroting Deep, and his eagerness for strife contributed a peal of joy.
Watching him, Linden wanted to cry, but she had no tears for a friend who had found his hearts desire.