Now, as Sending begins, the company of the quest is on a desperate run--away from Revelstone and na-Mhoram Gibbon's Grim. Using the Clave's own power to aid her new-found companions, Memla with her rukh draws on the Banefire to open a path through the Sunbane's monstrous jungle, allowing the quest to distance itself from Revelstone as quickly as possible.
With Covenant still recovering from his blood loss, the company stops to rest before dawn. Memla tells her companions to remain on the Coursers: the great beasts would protect them against the touch of dawn's first light. But the Haruchai go about unpacking supplies on the ground, somehow immune to the Sunbane's touch. Then the dawn arrives: a sun of pestilence.
So: why are the Haruchai immune to the first light of the Sunbane?
As they eat breakfast, Covenant asks Memla how long it takes the Clave to raise a Grim. She replies that its size and range must be considered, but she can read the Clave through her rukh, and the news isn't good. The na-Mhoram's Grim will be "very great."
For the rest of the day, the company continues its run. Memla, Covenant, Linden, Sunder, Hollian, six Haruchai, and Vain: a ragtag band of "outlaws" running from the Clave's "justice." By evening, Memla's endurance gives out, and they stop for the night.
Covenant wants to know what the Raver said or did to Linden that makes her now so afraid, but feels it's not right to confront her directly about it. Instead, he decides to tell everyone the story of his journey: from Andelain and the Dead, to his arrival at Revelstone with Memla. He also describes the soothtell. Covenant understands now why the Raver allowed him to see the truth about the Land's history: Foul wants him to blame himself for the destruction of the Staff, for the Sunbane, and for all the lives shed by the Clave--so that he would "surrender his ring in despair and self-abhorrence." And Foul's venom would be the thing that would drive Covenant over the edge, because it would make him so capable of destruction and killing that he would sink into guilt beyond saving.
He also explains that his Dead gave him the inspiration to seek out the One Tree, and that a new Staff of Law may enable him to fight the Sunbane and Foul without having to resort to the wild magic. All this Covenant says, trying to reach Linden, but she still doesn't respond. He even brings up Kevin Landwaster to cajole her into talking. Kevin had denied to himself the possibility that evil could be in his presence:
(Everytime I hear Kevin's story, I feel for the man.Linden had said, I don't believe in evil. Kevin also had tried not to believe in evil. He had unwittingly betrayed the Land by failing to perceive Lord Foul's true nature in time, and had thereby set the Despiser on the path to victory. Thus he had fallen into despair. Because of what he had done, he had challenged the Despiser to the Ritual of Desecration, hoping to destroy Lord Foul by reaving the Land. But in that, too, he had failed. He had succeeded at laying waste the Land he loved, and at losing the Staff of Law; but Lord Foul had endured.
)Linden, like Kevin, also had tried to deny that "evil" existed, until Gibbon-Raver's touch showed her otherwise. Or rather, the Raver had touched the darkness in her soul, and convinced her that evil existed within herself. But Covenant implores Linden to hear him:"Don't you see? Despair is no answer. It's what Foul lives on. Whatever happened to you, it doesn't have to be like this."
Still, Linden is silent. Finally, Covenant mentions the old man at Haven Farm whose life Linden had saved: "He told you to Be true." And Linden goes ballistic! Maybe the old man's words rang false to her. She did not know how to be true to herself, she only knew she was being manipulated by Foul, the Raver, everyone in this whole business:
This devastates Covenant. He had hoped that Linden was a free agent, outside of Foul's manipulations. Now it seemed that she was in the same boat as Covenant. Linden wants him to send her back to the real world, before "they make me kill you." But in order to do that for her, Covenant still needs a new Staff of Law: it's the only tool he knows of that is able send them back to their world. When Linden asks about his ring, Covenant answers squarely: "I can't control it."He[Gibbon]said you don't count! All they care about is your ring. The rest is me. He said, 'You have been especially chosen for this desecration. You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth.' Because I can see. That's how they're going to make me do what they want. By torturing me with what I see, and feel, and hear. You're making me do exactly what they want!
So, standing there in his weakness in front of his companions, Covenant gives himself a VSE. This he does to demonstrate to himself that in spite of everything else, he still can rely on his leper's discipline and intransigence:
It seems a rude comparison on Covenant's part, casting Linden in the same light as Kevin, but under the circumstances Covenant is actually showing great sensitivity, trying as hard as he can not to offend Linden's deep sense of hurt. Some may be exasperated by TC and LA's exchange here (and elsewhere), but it needs to be said that these are two complex adults trying to communicate with each other, not children. Therefore they bring with them all the emotional baggage of their lives to the space between them. How often do we find adults who are as readily open with their emotions as children are?Ah, you are stubborn yet.
Yes. By God. Stubborn.
As the company rides through the second day of pestilence, we are given another ghastly image of corrupted nature:
But it's the na-Mhoram's Grim that is dominating everyone's mind. Memla says to Covenant: "Still he raises it, and is not content. It will be a Grim to rend our souls." At sunset, Hollian foretells the morrow's sun: a third day of pestilence. But before she can stop herself, Hollian's vision is violated by the blackness of the Grim. Memla is almost paralyzed with fear and guilt: "This doom is upon my head. In ignorance and folly, I lured you to Revelstone." But Covenant doesn't allow himself to blame her. He persuades her to lead the company on, in the belief that the farther the Grim needs to be sent, the weaker it will be. So they run:The jungle under the sun of pestilence aggravated Covenant's sense of impending disaster. The insects thronged around him like incarnations of disease. Every malformed bough and bush was a-crawl with malformed bugs. Some of the trees were so heavily veined with termites that the wood looked leprous. And the smell of rot had become severe. Under the aegis of the Sunbane, his guts ached, half expecting the vegetation to break open and begin suppurating.
What great courage and strength from Memla!Memla permitted no disaster. At unexpected moments, her line veered past sudden obstacles; yet with her fire and her will she kept the company safe and swift. She was running for her life, for Covenant's life, for the hope of the Land; and she took her Coursers through the ruinous jungle like bolts from a crossbow.
On the third day of the company's run, the Grim is at last visible. The company bursts out of jungle onto a savannah, which is curiously marked by "isolated mounds of rock standing like prodigious cairns at great distances from each other." (I wonder what their significance is?) For another league, the company runs through the tall grass of the savannah, with the Grim poised behind it--"a thunderhead as stark as the sun's wound."
Suddenly, Memla stops! Covenant sees why:
Bizarre! What are these creatures??Directly across her path marched a furious column of creatures.
For a moment, he thought they were Cavewights--Cavewights running on all fours in a tight swath sixty feet wide, crowding shoulder to shoulder out of the south in a stream without beginning or end. They had the stocky frames, gangrel limbs, blunt heads of Cavewights. But if these were Cavewights they had been hideously altered by the Sunbane. Chitinous plating armored their backs and appendages; their fingers and toes had become claws; their chins were split into horned jaws like mandibles. And they had no eyes, no features; their faces had been erased. Nothing marked their foreskulls except long antennae which hunted ahead of them, searching out their way.
They rushed as if they were running headlong toward prey...In their haste, they sounded like the swarming of gargantuan ants--formication punctuated by the sharp clack of jaws.
With nowhere to turn, the company decides to fight here. But Memla has already made up her mind: "You must not die. That is certain. When the way is clear, cross instantly. This march will seal the gap swiftly. The Grim has found you because of me. Let it be upon my head." The Haruchai attempt to stop her, but she will have none of it. With her rukh-fire Memla holds her friends at bay, and holds the Grim in her sight. Covenant can see Memla's end in his eyes, but can only watch her helplessly. He fears to use the wild magic, fears the amount of power the Grim will provoke from him.
Then all hell breaks loose.
The Grim detonates, becoming a multitude of fatal black flakes slowly falling on the quest. Memla charges into the marching creatures--and draws the dense center of the Grim's might upon herself, away from her friends.
Sunder draws a shaft of power from the Banefire with his orcrest to destroy Grim-flakes before they can touch him and Hollian.
The Haruchai use pampas grass to attack the flakes. And Brinn heaves Covenant side to side to avoid the falling Grim, preserving the ur-Lord's life with supreme fidelity.
Flakes strike Vain, but do not detonate. They melt and run down his form like water.
Suddenly, a flake hits Memla's Courser, and both go down among the creatures. Regaining her feet, Memla makes her last stand, striking fury at the creatures around her. Covenant catches one last glimpse of her falling "with a scream of darkness in her chest."
Released from Memla's control, the four remaining Coursers go berserk. Over to SRD's crackling writing to desribe the intense action and end the chapter:
Whew! Another great chapter-ending cliffhanger!The fourth beast attacked the company. Its vehemence caught the Haruchai unprepared. Its eyes burned scarlet as it plunged against Hergrom, struck him down with its chest.
Hergrom had been helping Cail to protect Linden.
Instantly, the beast reared at her.
Cail tried to shove her aside. She stumbled, fell the wrong way.
Covenant saw her sprawl under the Courser's hooves. One of them clipped her head as the beast stamped, trying to crush her.
Again, the Courser reared.
Cail stood over her. Covenant could not strike without hitting the Haruchai. He fought to run forward.
As the Courser hammered down, Cail caught its legs. For one impossible moment, he held the huge animal off her. Then it began to bend him.
Linden!
With a prodigious effort, Cail heaved the Courser to the side. Its hooves missed Linden as they landed.
Blood appeared. From shoulder to elbow, Cail's left arm had been ripped open by one of the beast's spurs.
It reared again.
Covenant's mind went instantly white with power. But before he could grasp it, use it, Brinn knocked him away from another cluster of flakes. The grass was giddy fire and death, whirling. He flipped to his feet and swung back toward Linden; but his heart had already frozen within him.
As his vision cleared, he saw Sunder hurl a blast of Sunbane-fire which struck the Courser's chest, knocking it to its knees. Lurching upright again, it pounded its pain away from the quest.
But Linden lay under the Grim, surrounded by growing fires, and did not move.
Sorry if I seemed to gloss over Sunder and Hollian's role, but I felt the "meat" of the chapter was Covenant and Linden (as it always is, I suppose), and Memla's self-sacrifice. And the Haruchai are always cool.
Anyway, I'm having an awesome time here! And away we go to Chapter 22: Plain of Fire!
Are we arguing about agreeing?
